Lean manufacturing

LEAN MANUFACTURING
2Plan:

1. 
   What is Lean Manufacturing?
   
2. 
   The Five Principles of Lean Manufacturing
   
3. 
   Lean Manufacturing Tools and Techniques
   

What is Lean Manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing is a philosophy founded on a strategic approach to continuous improvement and sustainability through the holistic elimination of waste and inefficiencies throughout an organization.

Lean manufacturing is more than following a set of rules—rather, it is a philosophical approach that requires changing the pervasive mindset within an organization towards one of learning, innovation, and agility. An important set of ideals to this philosophy is the Toyota Production System (TPS), a set of guiding principles that influence many Lean organizations today. Some concepts, by name, that you might see in a Lean organization are: measurable everything, KPIs, visualization of data; value stream mapping; and a demand-based, “pull” approach to manufacturing.

Jump to a section:

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  A Brief History of Lean Manufacturing
  
• 
  The Five Principles of Lean Manufacturing
  
• 
  8 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing
  
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  The Benefits of Lean Manufacturing
  
• 
  Lean Manufacturing Tools and Techniques
  

A Brief History of Lean Manufacturing
The development of Lean manufacturing can be traced through history, even before the birth of TPS. While humans naturally desire to improve systems to be more efficient, Frederick Taylor wrote early accounts and Lean production (although not yet known by that name), releasing Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Henry Ford is commonly referenced as the true starting point of Lean, influencing even Toyota’s principles, because his distaste for waste led him to ruthlessly cut inefficiencies from his auto manufacturing business.

Studying methods within these early documents, Taiichi Ohno began to develop the world-renowned manufacturing processes of Toyota and, with them, the TPS. John Krafcik, an MIT alumni that now works at Hyundai, is official originator of the term “lean” as it relates to manufacturing, coining it via an article he released in the late 1980’s outlining how facilities following these sorts of principles performed better both in productivity and quality, as well as an account of how companies could reduce risk while implementing a “Lean” philosophy.