What you need to know about lean manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is an initiative that focuses on cost reduction and increases in turnover by constantly and methodically eliminating activities that do not add value to the manufacturing process. Basically what lean manufacturing does is help companies to achieve targeted productivity, as well as other things, by introducing tools and techniques that are easy to apply and maintain. What these tools and techniques are doing is reducing and eliminating waste, things that are not needed in the manufacturing process.

Now that you know and understand what lean manufacturing is there are a few important tools and concepts that you are going to need to know about in order to fully appreciate all aspects of lean manufacturing. One thing that you are going to need to know is visual controls and how they apply to lean manufacturing, in fact visual controls are one of the most important tools that you will be using if you decide to convert to lean manufacturing. One thing that you have to know about visual controls is what they actually are and luckily visual controls are basically exactly what they sound like. Visual controls are controls that you put in place that involve looking at things to see how you can improve them or fix things so that you are not wasting anything, which basically leads to an improvement in your manufacturing.

One of the reasons that visual controls are a vital part of lean manufacturing is because it provides the company with the ability to manage variances in process conditions and in product outcomes at the source of where the product is being made, not to mention it is used at the same time that the product is being made. Basically visual controls are going to allow you to respond faster to problems, but they are also going to allow you to develop through countermeasures to problems and by doing this your company is going to be able to achieve numerous things.

Some things that can be achieved and that have been achieved in other companies are:

• 90% reduction in materials waste
• 75% reduction in floor space
• 90% improvement in product quality
• 90% reduction in lead time
• 50% reduction in variable costs

Something else that you need to know about lean manufacturing and visual controls is that visual controls can actually be applied in any workplace to a variety of different departments. So basically what this means is that you can use visual controls in any kind of working environment, manufacturing process, office work, testing areas, etc. and the best part is that you can apply the visual controls to any area of that workforce. So what that means is that if you are using visual controls for your manufacturing process you can place the visual controls out on the floor where the assembly line is or anywhere else for that matter.

Something else that is important to know about lean manufacturing is how you should actually go about introducing it to your company. The reason for this is that different manufacturing techniques require different skills and techniques that you should use when converting to that style and lean manufacturing is no different. So before deciding to switch over to lean manufacturing you should take a moment to review some of these important factors.

The first thing that you need to be aware of is that unlike other manufacturing styles with lean manufacturing you are not going to want to train your entire workforce at the same time. What you are going to want to do is to get your upper management onboard and then choose a handful of people from the different departments. And then you are going to want to choose an area that is small and begin to introduce lean manufacturing to that one area. Keep in mind that when choosing an area you are going to also want to choose an area that will give you results rather quickly so that you can show your employees the good things that can happen by converting to lean manufacturing.