Lesson 1: What is Lean Manufacturing?

What is Lean Manufacturing?

Lean Manufacturing are a set of concepts and methodologies implemented in order to eliminate wastes in the manufacturing processes.

Lean Manufacturing was first introduced by the Japanese in Toyota Motor Company. The Lean concept originated from the Toyota Production System.

Taiichi Ohno is considered as the father of Lean Manufacturing.

Lean in English generally means having little, or too little, flesh or fat on the body.

Like how unnecessary fat in our body reduces our physical efficiency, likewise unnecessary wastes in the manufacturing processes too reduces the productive efficiency of manufacturing goods and services. Hence it is very essential to identify and eliminates those wastes in the processes.

The Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing are;

1. Inventory
2. Waiting
3. Defects
4. Over Production
5. Motion
6. Transportation
7. Over-Processing

You can use TIMWOOD as a simple mnemonics to remember the 7 wastes:

Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Over Production
Over-Processing
Defects

We have to keep in mind that waste is something that your customer is not going to pay you for and hence eliminating or reducing these wastes is essentially necessary.

Transport: Transporting material from one place to another in the process that takes unnecessary time is considered as a waste as it does not have any value to the product.

Inventory: Holding mass inventory occupies a lot of productive space and losing out on this space is considered as a waste. They are a result of companies over stocking their product towards imaginary market demand.

Motion: Unnecessary Movement of Man and Machine in the processes accumulates waste as it does not contribute any value to the product. If the movement between Man and Machine consumes a lot of time in the process, the waste of motion occurs.

Waiting: Waiting is probably where the process temporarily comes to a halt as the product does not move to the next process or stage of its production. This is where the waste of waiting occurs. Example like, waiting for material, waiting due to machine breakdown, waiting due to unavailability of resource best describes the waste of waiting.

Over Production: Producing products more than what is expected or demanded, results in the waste of over production. Over production of products will need more storage space, which leads to Inventory waste as well.

Over-Processing: An unnecessary process which does not add any value to the product or the customer is termed as a waste due to over processing. Over processing waste is any process of manufacturing that is unnecessary.It is like doing anything more that the customers actual requirement.

Defects: Any product that does not meet the customers requirement in terms of standard or quality is a defective product. Defects may occur due to deviation in producing a product, design, standard, process or customer expectation. Defect is a major waste as it involves further tasks like a) Re-work on the product; b) Scrapping the defective product; c) Inventory Space to dump the defect or scrap and d) Reproduce replacements for the defective product. These activities consume a lot of time and resources. Hence Defects are considered as a major waste in the manufacturing process.

Nowadays Unused-Talent is considered as 8th waste in Lean Manufacturing.

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