Remove the Waste in Your Business with Lean
Lean principles have their origin in the ubiquitous history of the Toyota manufacturing system. Driven by the need to compete with much larger companies that had much of the market locked up, Toyota needed to innovate its process. They had to produce their product at a reduced cost with little room for error. To do this, they had to remove as much waste as possible in their processes.
After the success of Toyota Lean production caught on in manufacturing, thought leaders noticed that its principles could be applied in other areas a well. The results speak for themselves as teams reduce the cost of production, experiment to improve, and increase knowledge. Fundamentally, Lean principles focus on how things flow within your organization.
Lean principles include removing waste in three area:
Muda - This form of waste is anything that does not provide value to the customer. Most team members have ideas about what these process wastes are. We step through these items to experiment and see what items are truly value added or not.
Muri - Overburdening a production line is a form of waste. The same is true of people with the biggest impact being errors and rework.
Mura - Unevenness in a production line causes a lot of waste. Stability in capacity that grows steadily over time is more cost effective than having wide swings of productivity.
From these three basic principles, programs can adopt more specific applicable strategies.
Eliminate Waste - This is simple to say and harder to do. We can help identify common wastes such as dependencies, priority inversion, and handoffs.
Amplify Learning - Two focus areas of learning are important for a business - production system and product knowledge. The production system is how your employees make a product. Product knowledge includes the item delivered as well as how to improve your product and meet customer needs. In other words, are you building the product right? Is it the right product?
Decide as Late as Possible - By delaying decision making, you will be ensured to make more correct decisions as more knowledge becomes available. More correct decisions means you will waste less time on moving in the wrong direction.
Optimize the Whole - Internal conflict and competition often exist in companies. Certain groups will optimize their portion of the work at the expense of another. This is costly. Seeing the whole picture will allow the entire group to succeed and reduce cost.
Empower the Team - The empowered team is key to Lean. The key to empowerment is leadership that truly serves the team. We can help train the leadership to be true servant leaders.
Build Integrity In - The production system needs to be designed for quality. It can't be an afterthought.
Deliver as Fast as Possible - Delivering fast allows for quick market feedback. In essence, you can test the market by quickly delivering and responding to the new information.
In our experience, there is a lot of waste in companies simply because they have not been exposed to modern processes. We can help you identify areas of opportunity to reduce waste and increase profit.