Efficiency is critical in most business operations and, most notably, manufacturing. Like judges in a footrace, customers usually only care about the result of a production “run”—the product itself. They don’t want to know how many working hours it took to assemble it; they could care less about how long it takes to move components across the factory floor. Their sole interest is getting the product they want at an appropriate price point and within a reasonable time frame.
 
Lean manufacturing is the industry’s equivalent to a runner optimizing his form. Toyota process guru Shigeo Shingo at the start put together the philosophy as a means of getting rid of the costs posed by human error and inefficiency.  As business researcher and author Michael Schrage highlights in an article for Harvard Business Review, Shingo’s ideas about lean manufacturing hung heavily on his attention to detail. Shrage writes, “Shingo looked for the simplest, cheapest, and surest way to eliminate foreseeable process errors. To make sure an assembler uses three screws, for example, package the screws in groups of three. Obvious? Perhaps. But “obvious” is frequently an underutilized and underappreciated asset.”
 
Let’s consider a real-world example.
 
A few years ago, I had the chance to tour a Panasonic refrigerator factory that had made “lean” thinking a central focus of its operations for over a decade. The work showed; that operation was undoubtedly one of the most reliable I had seen in my time working in the industry.
 
Here’s how it worked — rather than maintain a unique line for each variety of refrigerator, Panasonic created a manufacturing process that facilitated mix-model production on a single conveyor. This technique might not have worked if each product had to be painstakingly crafted according to model; nevertheless, Panasonic could maintain a single-stream process because they had developed a series of processes that allowed for mix model production. One of these is the dies used stamp out frames and doors were designed in order to be exchanged in below thirty seconds, in the place of the hours the same task would have demanded in a more traditional manufacturing environment. Each of the dies weighed tens of thousands of pounds and were likely challenging to integrate into the manufacturing operation, but having them enhanced operational flexibility for the manufacturer.
 
The benefits of lean manufacturing are intuitive. Manufacturers can save money during production, make better use of their workers’ time, and boost their capacity. The research on the potential for financial gain from “lean” thinking is limited, however it does offer some positive findings. In 2008, analysts partnered with Boeing to assess how lean manufacturing affected the company’s productivity on select projects. They found that lean initiatives resulted in a 28 percent reduction in labor cost, 60 percent of anomaly-caused time losses, 45 percent reduction in cycle time, and a 24 percent reduction in non-conformances. While these statistics are from a limited sample pool and don’t stand as hard-and-fast benchmarks, they do indicate a potential for savings and gains.
 
Value
Before manufacturers can grow to be “lean,” they need to build up a better sense of what their customers value. Typically, this requires some research into industry-established price points, expected quality, and typical turnaround times. Doing so will set up a few of the parameters for the company to use to develop productivity goals.
 
Value Stream
After the manufacturer has established their value parameters, they have to address the production process itself and identify any aspects that fail to create value. Rooting out these time-wasting steps will both allow for greater effectiveness and provide the manufacturer with a more comprehensive understanding of the production process.
 
Flow
All of the time-saving changes in the world will not likely make a difference if a production line is deficient in flow. If one area of production is hyper-efficient and the next slow, the line will inevitably form a bottleneck at the point of conflict. It's significant that manufacturers implement time-saving changes in order that the overall flow of production remains stable.
 
Pull
Developing pull requires manufacturers to improve their time to market benchmarks so as that customers won't need to suffer through extensive waiting periods. Having good “pull” isn't only a plus for the consumer, then again — short turnarounds empower manufacturers to produce on an as-needed basis, and thereby save them from the expense of accumulating a preemptive stockpile of products.
 
Perfection
There is never an endpoint for advancement. Being “lean” is a mentality, rather than a task; in this case, these thinkers strive for greater ability even though they implement massive innovations. Perfection may not exist — but lean manufacturers will continue to reach for it.
 
This article is originally posted on tronserve.com