"Create a Lean, Mean Machine"

George Alukal

Quality Progress

April 2003, pp. 29-35

This article provides a good, brief primer on Lean Manufacturing. The author states that "Lean emphasizes such things as teamwork, continuous training and learning, producing to demand (pull), mass customization and batch size reduction, cellular production, quick changeover, and total productive maintenance. Not surprisingly, lean implementation uses both incremental and breakthrough improvement approaches."

The author explains that cutting out the following eight types of waste is the major objective of lean implementation:

1. overproduction—making more, earlier or faster than required by the next process;
2. inventory waste—any supply in excess of a one-piece flow (make one batch and move one batch) through the manufacturing process, whether it is raw materials, work in process or finished goods;
3. defective product—product requiring inspection, sorting, scrapping, downgrading, replacement or repair;
4. overprocessing—extra effort that adds no value to the product (or service) from the customer's point of view;
5. waiting—idle time waiting for such things as manpower, materials, machinery, measurement, or information;
6. people—not fully using people's mental and creative skills and experience;
7. motion—any movement of people, tooling and equipment that does not add value to the product or service;
8. transportation waste—transporting parts or materials around the plant.

The "lean building blocks", or tools and techniques, discussed in the article are:

1. 5S—a system for workplace organization and standardization;
2. visual controls—placing all tooling, parts, production activities and indicators in view so everyone involved can understand the status of the system at a glance;
3. streamlined layout—designed according to the optimum operational sequence;
4. standardized work—performance according to prescribed methods, without waste and focused on ergonomics;
5. batch size reduction—the ideal is one-piece flow;
6. teams—working in improvement teams or daily work teams;
7. quality at the source—operators do not pass defects to the next process;
8. point of use storage—items are stored where they are needed;
9. quick changeover—ability to change tooling and fixtures rapidly to allow multiple products in smaller batches;
10. pull and kanban—not producing until the downstream customer signals a need;
11. cellular or flow—maximizing value added while minimizing waste;
12. total productive maintenance—maximizing overall equipment effectiveness.

The article also discusses the managers' role in successful lean implementation and the importance of implementing pilot projects first.

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