What Are Lean Manufacturing Concepts?

Lean manufacturing is likely a topic with which you are very familiar given your responsibilities within the organization. Lean manufacturing concepts have been integrated throughout a number of manufacturing environments to eliminate waste and ensure that all processes are streamlined to the point that the value delivered to the end customer is exceptional. At the same time, you also enable the organization to drive greater profitability by eliminating those things that fail to add any value to the bottom line, yet drain capital resources.

Lean Manufacturing Concepts: Born of Simplicity

Lean manufacturing concepts have been available to companies such as yours for the past five or six decades as a result of developments based primarily in Japan. The Toyota production system revolutionized the way manufacturing was done and produced a model by which all companies could base their production. Given the benefits that lean manufacturing concepts can produce, it would stand to reason that they were born of complicated processes. In reality, however, lean manufacturing concepts were actually developed from the simple premise that the customer will not pay for the mistakes; only the value of the product or service they receive.

Taking Lean Manufacturing Concepts to the Next Level

The simplicity in the development of lean manufacturing concepts had a significant impact on the manufacturing process. In essence, it completely changed the way people looked at the manufacturing process as it forced them to define the value of the end product from the customer’s point of view. Moving this focus away from the internal manufacturing point of view ensured the organization could be better equipped to meet the needs of the customer and drive differentiation in the market. To achieve this level of success, it is important that you understand the differences between lean manufacturing concepts and conventional manufacturing.

Lean Manufacturing Concepts: Eliminating Waste

In order to effectively compete in your market, your company has to be able to eliminate waste that can slow down the production process and add costs to the product that have to be passed along to the customer. Lean manufacturing concepts enable you to implement a systematic methodology to identify and eliminate a full range of waste or non-value-added activities. When you apply lean manufacturing concepts within your environment, you are truly creating more value for customers as you eliminate those activities that are considered waste. When you do this effectively, it makes a strong value proposition to use against your competitors to win more business.

Lean Manufacturing Concepts Focus on the Big Picture

When you implement lean manufacturing concepts within your production environment, you improve the entire business process. Incremental improvements may sometimes get more attention, yet they are hard to quantify on the bottom line. Lean manufacturing concepts view the production process as a whole and allow you to implement a process system that will significantly improve your overall profitability.

Lean Manufacturing Concepts or the Toyota Production System

Lean manufacturing concepts are often referred to at the Toyota Production System simply because the automaker established a process that was far superior to any other, enabling the company to drive significant value for the customer and record profits for the company. This system focused on a reduction in waste due to overproduction, transportation, motion, waiting, processing, inventory and defects. By applying lean manufacturing in your environment, you will see the improvements to your bottom line.