Lean manufacturing strategies

Lean manufacturing first got its start in the manufacturing industry. It is one of the best ways to increase productivity and focus on generating higher profits for your company. Many companies turn to lean manufacturing to helping them improve the way their company is currently being run.

Lean manufacturing focuses on 7 wastes and the elimination of these 7 wastes from your company. Lean manufacturing helps you understand what is needed to improve your company.

With lean manufacturing you will focus on how much you actually need to produce and focus more on producing to order verses carrying large stocks of inventory. Made to order products are better for the customer and for your company as you eliminate wasted space and wasted effort. There are several methods of controlling inventory but most companies stick to reorder points and the two-bin system to determine when your inventory stock is getting low enough to reorder.

Overproduction is a huge waste and it comes from poor predictions. When you aren't studying your numbers and finding out how much you actually need to order to keep your company afloat, you can order too much and leave your company in a poor position of having overproduction. Overproduction leads to problems with your company's cash flow as you will eat up your cash reserves to produce the products and you will need to wait until the products are sold before you make money from them. Producing exactly enough will take time to master but once you have it down, you will love it as it will save you wasted space, time, and money.

Another thing you will enjoy from lean manufacturing is avoiding underproduction. This will lead to backorders, customer and employee frustration, and a sales fallout. Again, it comes down to your ability to predict sales. Base your numbers on previous sales in order to find out how much you need to consistently produce in order to avoid underproduction and to also avoid underproduction.

Holding a warehouse is a big waste according to lean manufacturing. Warehousing leaves you with too many products sucking up money from your cash reserves and sitting on the shelves waiting to be sold. Your ultimate goal is to reduce the use of your warehouse and to try and eliminate it altogether.

Lean manufacturing looks at the way your manufacturing process is designed. You will focus on where your employees are standing around doing nothing along with other wasted time and efforts that are common with manufacturing facilities. Lean manufacturing helps you to not only identify these wastes but to eliminate them. Lean manufacturing will help you develop a system of consistency but it won't work if you can get your employees to accept the changes and focus on lean manufacturing.

Proper implementation of lean manufacturing may take time and a lot of patience. It requires the total commitment of management to show the employees that this is a great process and that it is needed. Take a look at the various lean manufacturing methods to see which ones actually fit the needs of your company and which ones will help you become a stronger organization. Sometimes you won't be able to implement lean manufacturing all at once and you and you will need to break it up into different stages for your employees to adjust to it and to grasp the changes.

Building an implementation strategy is the best way to implement lean manufacturing and to make sure it will work. There will be some roadblocks in the way but if you have designed a good management team, you will have an easier time teaching your employees about lean manufacturing.