Lean Thinking
Want to learn what Lean Thinking is all about? Here is a quick overview.
Value
In order to implement the concept of Lean Thinking, you must start by defining the Value of the product or service in the eyes of the customer. The problem most organisations have in specifying value is that they tend to concentrate on what they are able to deliver, rather than what it is that the customers really want, the fallacy of “we know their needs better than they do.” Of course, when they then try to improve the design or delivery process, the result can be more efficient waste, but waste none the less.
Think in terms of a ‘Value Stream’
Value Stream
The implementation of Lean Thinking results in a departure from batch scheduling and a movement to a continuous flow of single units of product.
Lean Thinking seeks to eliminate waste with the application of the following five steps:
- Specify Value
- Identify Value Stream
- Make the Value Stream Flow
- Replace Push Scheduling with Pull Scheduling
- Achieve Perfection
Lean thinking has been shown to deliver dramatic benefits in organisations. Organisations are able to sustain production levels with half the manpower, improving quality and reducing cycle times from 50-90%.
Waste
Taiichi Ochno of Toyota defined the following types of waste:
- Errors requiring rework
- Work with no immediate customer, either internal or external, resulting in work in progress and finished goods inventory
- Unnecessary process steps
- Unnecessary movement of personnel or materials
- Waiting by employees as unfinished work in an upstream process is completed
- Design of product or processes that do not meet the customer needs
Flow
Once the non-value added, unnecessary steps have been eliminated, we can look for flow of the remaining steps. In this step, we seek to eliminate wait times and the compartmentalisation of the workflow.
The attempts to improve the departmental efficiency can create waste in the product value stream if the departmental efficiency produces outcomes that do not serve the customer needs, or requires inputs that increase costs for suppliers without adding value. While standardisation of product components make the individual processes more efficient, this efficiency can come at the cost of customer value. Think about the usual new car purchase experience. You buy “the package” which includes things you are paying for but do not need, because it is more efficient for the production and delivery processes.
This batch-imposed waste is compounded if changes occur in design or customer needs, as the WIP or final good inventories require rework or become scrap. Note that these concepts are not limited to manufacturing; businesses in the service sector can also generate waste. Think of the hamburgers cooked in advance, waiting for an order, or checking account statements that come at the end of the month, long after you could possibly prevent an overdraw. Transparency helps to increase the awareness of these types of waste.
Pull
Pull ensures that resources are used only when a customer makes an actual demand for the product or service. Pull moves the organization from producing for inventory to producing for customers, resulting in inventory cost reductions and reduced waste from making a product that the market may not want, now or in the future.
Perfection
The final step in Lean implementation is Perfection, which is not the endpoint that you might think, but rather a call to continuously repeat the Lean cycle. In practice, it has been found that subsequent Lean improvements can reap additional benefits of the same magnitudes discovered in earlier applications of the Lean methodology.