Lean Manufacturing Principle
Lean Manufacturing techniques allow manufacturers to eliminate unwanted steps in their production cycle to achieve the objective of speed with quality. As every quality process improvement technique has its own set of principles, so does Lean Manufacturing technique. Producers know it as Lean Manufacturing principles. A lean manufacturing principle advocates reduction of wastes in each step of production to achieve faster production times which in turn translates to faster delivery times of the product to the customer.
What are the Lean Manufacturing principles?
- Waste Reduction - Japanese car manufacturer Toyota found out that production times slow down due to some factors and their delay or lag times. They found that if these wastes or delay time factors are eliminated of their production process, they could achieve faster production times. What started as an experiment for Toyota, went on to become one of the principles of Lean Manufacturing which is even implemented by many manufacturing companies in the USA.
- Just in Time Production - A principle which believes in the right time, the right part and the right amount has allowed manufacturers all over the world to increase their production speeds as this principle found an answer for them to find a way through large production times for heavy equipments. Just in Time Production or JIT Production is another of the Lean techniques which are implemented by manufacturers on their production processes.
- Continuous Improvement - Lean Manufacturing believes in the concept of Continuous Improvement which advocates the fact that processes would need to improve and reinvent all the time to ensure that the customer satisfaction levels are met all the times.
- 5S for waste reduction and waste elimination - Japanese manufacturers who were transitioning Lean Manufacturing techniques advocated the use of 5 S principle to tackle with wastes in the production process. Evolving around the concept of Sort-Standardize, 5 S has gone on to become one of the pillars of Lean Manufacturing initiatives around the world.
Lean Manufacturing is all about waste reduction and improving process speeds. A lean manufacturing principle advocates the minimizing of waste times which in turn would eventually increase production speeds. Increase in production speeds would mean that products are delivered faster to the customers thus enabling higher customer satisfaction.
Many manufacturers around the world have applied Lean Manufacturing principles in their production processes. The results have more than surprised everyone and especially those who were involved in the Lean implementation process. Though, the value of these principles could not have been realized without active coordination of the production cycle team members.