Lean Manufacturing Process
Lean manufacturing process is identified by the lean tools and techniques employed on a production process to generate cost benefits by saving production times for a particular product. Lean manufacturing process prides itself on its waste reduction methodology and other tools to ensure that this objective is achieved.
What are the various methods of Lean Manufacturing Process?
In principle, six methods embody the spirit of Lean Manufacturing techniques. It is these six methods (some of these select themselves on default) that make a Lean Manufacturing process successful. The six methods are as follows:
- Kaizen - This is the basic unit of all the production processes where Lean techniques are intended to be deployed. The Kaizen method eliminates wastes in processes and aims at improving productivity by sustaining continuous process improvement in the targeted processes of the company. Typically, a Kaizen event starts with a noticed defect or variation in the process. After the variation is detected, the team members of multiple functions put their brains together, do Value Stream Mapping and come up with a process of fixing the issue. This form of continuous improvement is very successful as production just does not proceed ahead without the variation being fixed. More importantly, Kaizen allows companies to adapt to new challenges and learn from the variations.
- 5S - Conceived as the Sort - Sustain strategy, the 5S method advocates a company to maintain its workplace in an orderly manner. This, 5S believes is the 1st step towards waste reduction. 5S stands for 5 stages of waste reduction namely, Seiri (Sort), Seiton( Set in order), Seiso (Shine), Seiketsu (Standardize) and Shitsuke (Sustain). The 5S method advocates smooth flow of information and this it achieves by the organization and cleaning of the workplace.
- Cellular Manufacturing - A very popular technique of manufacturing which embodies the Lean spirit. As per Cellular Manufacturing, small units are set up which take care of individual units of a larger product. The smaller units are processed and sent to the next step in the process chain. The next unit does its function on the product and sends it to the next stage and so on. Effective flow of information and activities is achieved by this mechanism and which ensures that production time is reduced to a great extent.
There are other methods like Just in Time Production, Total Productive Maintenance which allow the efficient execution of a Lean technique on the production processes. If conceived and implemented properly, these six methods are more than simple steps to achieve cost benefits and higher customer satisfaction levels of the production process.