|
What is Lean?
Lean is an improvement approach to improve flow and eliminate waste. Lean is basically about getting the right things to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantities, while minimising waste and being flexible and open to change.
Lean brings into many industries of all kinds, including service industries, new ideas, methodologies, concepts, tools and frameworks that have been successfully used to improve process flow and reduce waste. The main principles, methodologies and tools of Lean address workplace organisation, standardisation, visual control and elimination of non-value added steps are applied in order to improve flow, eliminate waste, operate a lower cost, and exceed customer expectations.
The main types of waste that are tackled by Lean are:
- Transportation (moving items that is not actually required to perform the processing)
- Inventory and Queues (all components, work-in-progress and finished items not being processed)
- Motion and Movement (people or equipment moving or walking more than is required to perform the processing)
- Waiting (waiting for the next process step)
- Overproduction (service delivery or production ahead of demand)
- Over Processing (due to poor systems, tools or process design creating activity)
- Defects and Errors (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing errors and defects)
The main goals of Lean are:
- how to improve flow to eliminate waste and reduce delays
- how to get things right first time, thus improving quality and lowering costs
- how to empower staff, motivate them to sustain results
- to make good decisions using evidence
- that learning by doing gets results, quickly
The typical phases of a Lean implementation are:
- Senior Management to agree and discuss their lean vision
- Management brainstorm to identify project leader and set objectives
- Communicate plan and vision to the teams
- Ask for volunteers to form the Lean Implementation team (5-7 works best, all from different departments)
- Appoint members of the Lean Implementation Team
- Train the Implementation Team in the various lean tools - make a point of trying to visit other non competing businesses which have implemented lean
- Select a Pilot Project to implement – 5S is a good place to start
- Run the pilot for 2–3 months - evaluate, review and learn from your mistakes
- Roll out pilot to other business units and operations areas
- Evaluate results, encourage feedback
- Stabilize the positive results by teaching managers how to train the new standards you've developed with TWI methodology
- Once you are satisfied that you have a established Lean program, consider introducing the next lean tool. Select the one which will give you the biggest return for your business.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material adapted and condensed from the Wikipedia article on Six Sigma. |
|
