Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Lean Manufacturing: Transforming Businesses Across The World

Companies of different sizes are now implementing lean manufacturing, for improving business processes and lowering the costs. A large number of product manufacturers have cut down their costs of production by integrating lean manufacturing principles at their place of work. In order to make most of its available resources, every leading production house carries out various lean manufacturing assessments.
What is the lean concept?
Lean manufacturing principles were introduced by Toyota-the Japanese automaker, in the middle of the 20th century. Three broad categories-Muri, Mura and Muda, were introduced by the automaker, in order to eliminate various wastes in their production unit. The lean manufacturing principles were precisely built from these broad concepts introduced by the Toyota.

Mura concept
The concept of Mura comprises of different steps that have to be taken proactively or in response to a complete manufacturing processes, for the purpose of eliminating unforeseen wastes in the production houses.
Muda
This concept primarily refers to the seven waste forms (seven waste forms are discussed later in this article).
Muri
This concept is inclusive of all modifications in the manufacturing processes for getting rid of the identified wastes.
Benefits of lean manufacturing assessment
Some of the benefits of the lean manufacturing assessment in different production houses are discussed in this post. By implementing the lean manufacturing principles, the manufacturers will be able to cut downs different waste types easily and quickly. Flexibility and waste elimination are other benefits associated with lean manufacturing principles in workplace.
Lean manufacturing principles implemented in production houses have helped the manufacturers to achieve greater productivity and reduced operations cost. These principles have helped the production houses to ensure enhanced quality of their products.
Seven types of wastes
Analyzing the working of lean principles by qualified lean manufacturing consultants starts by understanding and knowing the seven waste forms. These seven waste forms are generated during product manufacturing.
  1. Waiting
A lot of time can be wasted due to delay in the manufacturing processes. This delay (waiting) can effectively increase the worker’s downtime of product manufacturing processes.
  1. Overproduction
Overproduction is of two types. In first case, there is a product that is manufactured before its purchasing need arises. In this, different resources must be earmarked to store the products or merchandises. In second case, a product is sold at very low rate.
  1. Processing
If the product manufacturers are confused about the precise needs of customers or about the products’ working, then this confusion can result in the generation of waste.
  1. Motion
Motion is a term used for all the body movements that are made by a worker during the manufacturing processes. Sometime motion can cause stress. It may also lead to injuries as well.
  1. Inventory
If you have an excess of inventory then you are required to spend additional money to store it.
  1. Correction
It refers to the correction made in a work that has already been done. You have to suffer heavy cost loss because you will have to check the production processes from the beginning.
  1. Conveyance
It is waste caused due to unnecessarily movement of one part from one place to another, during manufacturing processes. Part can be damaged during the movement and manufacturers will suffer loss due to it. Also, it can delay the entire manufacturing processes too, which can cause increased operational cost.


Service-oriented enterprises use leansix sigma manufacturing consulting firms to generate value from their internal processes. Regardless of its nature to deploy lean principles at its workshop, the lean manufacturing consultancies empower a company. Production units and service companies approach leading lean manufacturing consultants for effective implementation of lean manufacturing processes.

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Defining Lean Manufacturing and Its 6 Lean Concepts and Tools

In order to understand what exactly lean manufacturing is, you should understand its purpose first, then only you will be able to grasp its motive. Lean, also known as 'the Toyota Production System serves following purposes:
  • Provide customer satisfaction
  • Understand the value stream
  • Continuously improve
The lean manufacturing aims at fulfilling these two motives while keeping customer satisfaction at its best standards. Everything that a business should ensure is value to the customer; anything else is not at all valuable.
In other words, lean manufacturing principle emphasizes on satisfying customers consistently by providing them 'what exactly they want', and 'when they want' while eliminating waste through Kaizen - a Japanese word that means, 'change for the better' or 'good change'.
It also encourages providing results through the minimum amount of resources by involving all of the employees in a continual process of improvement.
Some of the motives of lean products can be summarized as:
  • Eliminate waste
  • Minimize inventory
  • Empower workers
  • Design for rapid changeover
  • Partner with suppliers
  • Create a culture of continuous improvement
  • Maximize flow
  • Pull production from customer demand
  • Meet customer requirements
  • Do it right the first time
To know how lean manufacturing can help you maximize the productivity, approach a lean manufacturing consulting firm.

Lean Concepts and Tools
There are many tools and concepts that lean manufacturing concepts comprise of. Each of the concepts has its own set of benefits, and is employed depending upon the requirements of a manufacturing unit.
Here are six of the most critical ones:
Cellular Manufacturing
This approach emphasizes on arranging all equipment and workstations according to the different processes, located in close proximity to production of a group of similar products. It aims at reducing cycle time and inventories to meet marketing response times.
Takt Time
This is known as the 'heartbeat' of the customer. It refers to the average at which a company should manufacture the product or carry out transaction based on the customer's requirements and working time provided.
Takt = T/D
Where T refers to the Time available for product/service.
D is a demand for the quantity. And T gives information on production pace or units.
Standardized Work
It refers to a process of documented description of methods, materials, tools, and processing times required to meet takt time for any job provided. This approach aids in standardizing the tasks throughout the value stream.
One Piece Flow or Continuous Flow
This approach aims at minimizing the batch size so as to eliminate system constraints. Under this principle, a product or information is produced by moving at a steady pace from one value-added processing step to the next while ensuring no delays.
Pull Systems and Kanban
This approach enables a customer process to signal a supplying process to manufacture a product when it is needed. Kanban is basically the signals used within a pull system through scheduling combined with traveling instruction provided by visual devices such as containers and cards.
Quick Changeover/ SMED
Developed by Shigeo Shingo, it is a 3-stage methodology aimed at reducing the time taken while switching a machine by externalizing and streamlining steps. Shorter changeover times are used to reduce batch sizes and maximize just-in-time.
Quick Changeover reduces the setup time, thereby improving flexibility and responsiveness to customer changes.
Approach a lean manufacturing consulting company to know which tool would be suitable for your manufacturing unit.

Contact us if you require lean manufacturing consulting service provider company to know which tool would be suitable for your manufacturing unit.for more information contact: Group50® product manufacturing consulting firm Los Angeles, CA (909) 949-9083 info@group50.com