Proper Ways To Implement Lean Manufacturing

A number of manufacturing plants have heard about lean manufacturing and they know how it could help their company to reduce wastes but they often struggle to understand how to properly implement it. Proper implementation of lean manufacturing is vital to the company if you are going to have any type of success with it and to actually see waste reduction occur. Lean manufacturing is focused on helping your company to become more proficient and effective. As you learn about wastes you will understand how to alter things within the company to make it better. Simple changes like rearranging the shop floor can boost productivity.

The various techniques that are involved with lean manufacturing are broad. You need to narrow down the different programs in order to find one that will be able to give your organization the desired results you need to make a difference.

What are the company's strengths and weaknesses? You want to stop waste but you have to really understand what qualifies as waste. There are some organizations that feel waste is just products that are defective and need to be recycled. Others know that time is another area that is considered waste and also needs to be addressed. According to the lean manufacturing system there are about 7 different types of waste that you need to identify and work on eliminating:
1. Waiting
2. Transportation
3. Processing
4. Motion
5. Defects
6. Inventory
7. Overproduction

As you can see there are many areas that need to be addressed, not just one are that could be causing the issues to arise. The goal as you can see is to reduce or eliminate waste. You have to create an environment that allows you to identify the different wastes and then to focus on finding ways to make things better so you can eliminate the wastes.

Typically anything that does not add value to the company will be considered a waste. This can be time that is wasted by employees as they need to walk around to find different tools and other things they need just to do their jobs. You have to see how much time is wasted here and to see that simply changing the organization of the shop floor or other things can easily lead to a big improvement in the productivity for the company and will give you a stronger organization overall.

To implement lean manufacturing you need to make sure that management is properly involved with it and that they understand how to have the right type of mindset to motivate others. Your staff has to believe you and needs to see that you are going to be strong and that you believe in this program. When you are committed to it and you hold others responsible to their roles, they will be able to improve the company by reducing waste and following along with the program and the new training procedures that you have implemented.

Lean manufacturing procedures need to have more than just training of your staff but they also need to have a system in place to improve relationships with your vendors and other suppliers. Customers also need to become a part of the program in order to give you the right results of waste reduction. What are the biggest complaints by your customers? Are they related to customer service or are they related to your manufacturing process? As you identify these complaints and issues that people have, it will be simple for you to go the right route in preventing wastes from occurring and giving everyone the results they want.