Lean was invented by Taiichi Ohno and evolved at Toyota over the last 50 years
Its goal is to eliminate waste and continuously improve productivity in every area of work, including customer relations, product design, supplier networks and factory management
Wikipedia says Lean aims ‘to produce less low-value human effort, less inventory, less time to develop products, and become highly responsive to customer demand while producing top quality, error-proofed products in the most efficient and economical manner’
There are five principles which define the Lean process:
Provide what the customer wants, defect free
Provide what’s required on demand, exactly as requested
Provide an immediate response to problems or required changes
Provide what’s required with a minimum of waste
Provide what’s required safely, both for the customer and the supplier
Lean is said to address seven deadly wastes:
Overproduction – production getting ahead of demand
Transportation – moving things unnecessarily
Waiting – for the next production step
Inventory – when not being processed
Motion – moving more than necessary to complete a process
Over-processing – due to poor tool or product design
Defects – the effort involved in inspecting for or fixing defects
Lean also seeks to improve the flow (smoothness) of work by production levelling:
UK car manufacturers used to forecast demand, make to stock, sell what was in stock and then deliver as best they could
By contrast, Toyota total up their actual demand, turn their output volume controls to suit, meet all the variety demanded and deliver fast
However, critics say Lean practitioners tend to focus on cutting specific task times and costs – and that could even increase overall costs – if many of those tasks are unnecessary for adding value for the customer, cutting their costs by 10% say would make little sense
Hence, one must always focus on why and how you do things for customers, and the overall Order Cycle Time – OCT – big cost reductions tend to follow when you put customers first
