How to implement lean manufacturing in order to reduce your business' waste

Lean manufacturing is a way of improving manufacturing processes and making them more efficient and worthwhile and productive.The way that lean manufacturing makes manufacturing processes more productive is by reducing the seven wastes.The seven wastes are defined as the following:

The seven deadly wastes of lean manufacturing
1.Overproduction, or more production than there is actually demand.

2.Transportation, or the moving of products that is not really needed to actually perform the processing.

3.Waiting, or waiting around for the next step in production.

4.Inventory, which consists of either all components, the work in progress, and the finished product not being processed.

5.Motion, which consists of both or either people moving or walking or equipment moving more than they actually have to in order to the processing to be performed.

6.Over Processing, which results from poor product design or poor tool design, leading to unnecessary activity to compensate.

7.Defects, which refers to the effort that is involved in looking for, inspecting, and then fixing defects in processes and products.

Lean manufacturing aims to eliminate as much as possible these seven wastes, also known as the seven deadly wastes, from manufacturing processes.Lean manufacturing strives to use less of everything when compared to how much is used in regular mass production manufacturing.Thus lean manufacturing works to have less waste (less of the seven deadly wastes), less space used for manufacturing, less human effort, less investment in tools, and less time spent designing and developing a new product by engineers and designers.Lean Manufacturing was mostly designed primarily at Toyota, as the War Manpower Commission developed lean manufacturing tenets and founded the Toyota Production System, also known as TPS.Toyota also developed Six Sigma since Six Sigma manufacturing works to reduce the numbers of variations that occur in processes.

Lean manufacturing, by working to reduce waste and improve customer value, is a great way to reduce costs overall.Lean manufacturing is no longer used just in mass manufacturing businesses and processes, but has also been adapted in a number of different types of businesses and organizations, from non profit organizations to the health care system.Lean manufacturing has developed a number of so-called tools that work to identify and then reduce waste, then improve quality, and also improve production time and reduce costs.Waste is called muda, which is the Japanese word for waste.In order to reduce waste, lean manufacturing uses what is known as kaizen, or continuous process improvement, the 5 Whys, and poka-yoke, which is also known as mistake-proving.

Another approach to lean manufacturing entails eliminating mura, or unevenness, by improving the flow of the work that is done through the system.This approach works by improving the process itself and making it run more smoothly, rather than just focusing on cutting down waste.This approach to smooth flow works well because it identifies where quality problems are in the processes, and then as it fixes those problems in processes, waste is reduced.

Many companies adapt the principles and the approaches of lean manufacturing in order to make their own business work better.Whether you choose to use the smooth flow approach or the tools approach, you will want to hire a firm that specializes in converting companies to lean manufacturing, and also works to train employees and to educate employees.One of your biggest obstacles will be retraining employees and helping them move smoothly into new ways of thinking and new ways of running the business.