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Applying LEAN Principles to our daily lives

Updated on September 9, 2011

I would imagine many us face the common problem of not having enough time to do the things we want. We hope to have more than 24 hours in a day. Unfortunately, we cannot change that. You have heard of good time management to help you deal with the situation. We could also make use of some LEAN concepts in our daily lives to help us to be more efficient.


What is LEAN anyway?
For those of you who work in a multi-national manufacturing company may be familiar with LEAN concepts. A philosophy made popular by Toyota, LEAN manufacturing principles are used in big industries to streamline their processes to be more efficient. The main idea is to identify and eliminate "WASTE" by optimizing the use of resources and minimizing work, inventory and rejects.

We could apply some of these tools in our daily lives to help us to more (work) with less (time). Below are some suggestions you might want to consider.


1. Mapping out your activities - a.k.a. Value Stream Mapping
First, make a list of your activities. Estimate how much time each activity takes (an average) and find the "Bottleneck processes" - activities that consumes the most time. Identify which of these activities brings value and which are not. You can categorize them into:

  • Important and urgent (DO IT NOW)

  • Important but Not Urgent (DEVELOP A PLAN)

  • Not Important but Urgent (REJECT IF NOT NECESSARY)

  • Not important and Not urgent (DON'T BOTHER)

Give priority and complete those with labeled as "Important and Urgent". Develop a proper plan and time schedule for those tasks that are "Important but Not Urgent. See if you could diplomatically reject those tasks that are "Not Important but Urgent". Don't even bother the ones listed in last category. You will be surprised how much time we are busy doing nothing.



2. Eliminate the WASTE
WASTE in LEAN terms means any activity that does not provide value. Generally, there are seven types of waste - transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over producing, over processing and defects. To identify waste, we must closely observe how we perform a specific job or task and ask these questions.

  • Is there a faster way to complete the job by eliminating WASTE like:

    • Are there too much unnecessary walking, motion or waiting time?

    • Are you over doing something or doing more than what is needed?

    • Are you applying the right techniques and using the right tools to perform the job?

    • Are you keeping the right amount of inventory for your groceries?


3. Good "5S"
5S is all about good housekeeping and organization. It goes through a process of

  • Sorting - clean up and get rid of all unnecessary stuffs (suggestion - organize a garage sale or sell them in eBay to earn some money).

  • Straightening - identify an appropriate place for everything and arrange them accordingly. Always keep items back to its original place. This will powerful time saver because studies showed that we waste at least ten percent of our time just searching for things.

  • Sweeping or Shine - invest 5 to 10 minutes daily to organize and tidy up your workspace.

  • Standardizing - simplify and be consistent of these work practices to all work areas.

  • Sustaining - maintain what you have established. This is where most people give up. Remember good habits require discipline.

working

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