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Lean Manufacturing

 

 

TPS

Lean manufacturing is the term most commonly used to describe the Toyota Production System (TPS). Lean manufacturing includes a set of principles that lean thinkers use to achieve improvements in productivity, quality, and lead-time by eliminating waste through kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese word that essentially means "change for the better" or "good change." The principles that lean manufacturers employ are:

Taichi Ohno, former Toyota Chief Engineer, identified 7 wastes of manufacturing:

  • Overproduction

  • Transportation

  • Unnecessary Inventory

  • Inappropriate Processing

  • Waiting

  • Excess Motion

  • Defects

These wastes should not be considered separate categories; instead, we should use these wastes as a teaching/learning tool to help identify opportunities to improve our work environment and focus on adding value for the customer. Wastes are non-value-added activities for which the customer would not be willing to pay. There are many tools and concepts that lean manufacturing companies employ to support the above principles and eliminate such wastes including:

 

  • Takt Time - The heartbeat of the customer; the average rate at which a company must produce product or execute transactions based on customer requirements and available working time.

  • Standardized Work - A description of methods, materials, tools, and processing times required to meet takt time for any given job.

  • One Piece Flow or Continuous Flow - A methodology by which product or information is produced by moving at a consistent pace from one value-added processing step to the next with no delays in between.

  • Pull Systems - A methology by which a customer process signals a supplying process to produce product or information or deliver product/information when it is needed.

  • Five Why's - A thought process by which the question "why" is asked repeatedly to get to the root cause of a problem.

  • Quick Changeover / SMED - A 3-stage methodology developed by Shigeo Shingo that reduces the time to changeover a machine by externalizing and streamlining steps.

  • Mistake Proofing - A methodology that prevents an operator from making an error.

  • Five S - A five step methodology aimed at creating and maintaining an organized visual workplace.

 

EMS Consulting Group helps companies implement lean strategies through lean training and lean consulting services. To learn more, read our lean manufacturing case studies or lean manufacturing articles.