Benjamin Sweeney - Lean QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Lean

Contents

Terms displayed in bold italic can be found defined in the glossary

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Introduction

The Lean model for production and manufacturing is a collection of business practices, strategies, and methods that focus on waste elimination and continuous improvement within an organization. Often referred to simply as Lean, this business model has applications in every industry, not just the world of manufacturing. All businesses, and many organizations outside the business world, can benefit from Leans rigorous and vigilant approach to waste reduction and efficiency.

Lean is a management philosophy with a holistic approach that was interpreted from the Toyota Production System , an operations and corporate culture system developed by the popular and highly successful automobile manufacturer, Toyota. At the center of the Lean business concept is the effort to eliminate three types of manufacturing variation and waste: muda, mura, and muri.

Muda represents waste in its most physical form, and it directly translates from Japanese as futility or uselessness. The objective with waste reduction and elimination is to clearly separate the value-added activities from the activities that are identified as wasteful or non-value-added . Muda is the easiest form of waste to understand. It is what many organizations would traditionally classify as waste: defective production, time spent performing non-value-added activities, unnecessary inventory, etc. These specific forms of waste, as well as several other sources of muda, are identified and outlined in detail in the next section.

Mura is waste in the sense of unevenness. Distinct from muda and muri, mura is less easily quantified, though no less impactful on operations. Unevenness in workflow can result in unnecessary downtimes or periods of unnecessary stress on equipment, systems, and workforce. From a management stance, unevenness creates another element that all business practitioners seek to eliminate: uncertainty. Irregular intervals are difficult to predict, and therefore, forecasting becomes difficult. A high degree of uncertainty can greatly reduce the responsiveness of an organizations supply chain. Mindfulness of mura is essential when determining facility layout or assembly protocol as well as understanding and improving the long-term forecasting abilities and short-term processes for an organization and the ability to respond to fluctuating demand.

Muri is a failure to understand capabilities or to succumb to the effects of overburden. This is a tangible concept when applied to facility layout and assembly and manufacturing processes; too much of a workload on a system can cause failure or increase rates of defective production. Overburden in conjunction with unevenness can also create expensive bottlenecking within an organization. Wear and tear on machines or repetitive strain injuries among the workforce can be reduced or alleviated through ensuring that only value-added activities are being performed, as well as through reduction of waste in other areas.

In conjunction with the overriding value of waste reduction through identification and elimination of muda, mura, and muri lies the philosophy of kaizen, or the creation of a culture of continuous improvement. The concept of kaizen is as powerful as it is versatile and, in practice, can be implemented in a multitude of ways that span diverse industries. Kaizen is a mindset as much as a business asset, and represents organizational culture more than a set of manufacturing tools. Permeating all levels of the organization, kaizen not only lays the groundwork for the implementation of Lean, but also guides decision-making, innovation, and improvement at both the micro and macro levels. The concept of kaizen is so powerful that even personal trainers and life coaches use similar approaches with the individual lives of clients seeking to better themselves.

Many aspects of the Lean production system build on this common thread of kaizen and rigorous, continuous improvement. As we explore the world of Lean production, the concept of kaizen, if not implicitly stated, will be evident in best practices and prescribed methods.

Though its origins lie squarely in the manufacturing sector, the less tangible aspects of Lean mean that it can be tailored to fit nearly any organization from the service sector, like healthcare firms, insurance agencies, government agencies, and beyond. Since Lean is a blend of keen, structured business improvement insights and efficient, impactful manufacturing tools, organizations in other industrial sectors can stretch the Lean model to fit their operations. In addition to the data-driven and day-to-day productivity tools that are all part of the Lean toolkit, the real power of Lean lies in the creation of a vigilant mindset among the entire workforce, from workers on the assembly line all the way up to the CEOs office, that the elimination of waste, the need for continuous improvement, and the idea that anyone can effect positive change within the organization are essential for a firms success and longevity.

What follows is a primer on the concepts and ideas that drive the Lean business model and the key components of the winning mindset that keeps contemporary companies on the map.

| 1 | Six Components of Lean Philosophy