Lean

Lean
What is lean?
• Lean is a manufacturing philosophy, that if
followed will ensure that the company will run
more efficiently. Lean focusses on reducing
waste, increasing value for customers and
creating a work environment that encourages
employees to problem solve creatively.
Lean history
• Lean is first and foremost inspired by the Toyota
production system (TPS). Kiichiro Toyoda and Taiichi
Ohno were inspired by Henry Ford’s success with
the Model T, however they saw faults in the system,
specifically Ford’s inability to deal with variation in
the production system. It can also be argued that
Kiichiro Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno were inspired by
TWI (training within industry), a manufacturing
philosophy employed by the allies during WWII.
• TPS shifted the focus in manufacturing from
machine utilisation to product flow. And
introduced tools such as value stream
mapping, the A3 method, 5S, SMED and
created the idea of Kaizan(continuous
improvement)
• The first mention of lean was in the book “The
machine that changed the world” by James P.
Womack, Daniel Roos, and Daniel T. Jones.
Kiichiro Toyoda
Kaizan
• Kaizan is arguably the central pillar on which
lean is built. Kaizan refers to a company
culture of continuous improvement. In lean
enterprises, all employees are encouraged to
use their brains to continuously improve the
system they are part of. Only by instilling this
culture in the employees will the organisation
truly thrive. The Process of kaizan is never
finished, because perfection is unattainable.
The seven Wastes
The Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing are:
• Transport
• Inventory
• Motion
• Waiting
• Over-Processing
• Overproduction
• Defects
The acronym TIMWOOD is useful when trying to remember
the wastes.
The waste of transport
• Transport is the movement of materials from one location
to another, this is a waste as it adds zero value to the
product. Why would your customer (or you for that
matter) want to pay for an operation that adds no value?
• Transport adds no value to the product, you as a business
are paying people to move material from one location to
another, a process that only costs you money and makes
nothing for you. The waste of Transport can be a very high
cost to your business, you need people to operate it and
equipment such as trucks or fork trucks to undertake this
expensive movement of materials.
The Waste of Inventory
• Inventory costs you money, every piece of product tied
up in raw material, work in progress or finished goods
has a cost and until it is actually sold that cost is yours. In
addition to the pure cost of your inventory it adds many
other costs; inventory feeds many other wastes.
• Inventory has to be stored, it needs space, it needs
packaging and it has to be transported around. It has the
chance of being damaged during transport and
becoming obsolete. The waste of Inventory hides many
of the other wastes in your systems.
The Waste of Motion
• Unnecessary motions are those movements of man or

machine which are not as small or as easy to achieve as
possible, by this I mean bending down to retrieve heavy
objects at floor level when they could be fed at waist level
to reduce stress and time to retrieve. Excessive travel
between work stations, excessive machine movements
from start point to work start point are all examples of the
waste of Motion.
• All of these wasteful motions cost you time (money) and
cause stress on your employees and machines, after all
even robots wear out
The Waste of Waiting
• How often do you spend time waiting for an answer from
another department in your organization, or waiting for a
delivery from a supplier or an engineer to come and fix a
machine? We tend to spend an enormous amount of
time waiting for things in our working lives (and personal
lives too), this is an obvious waste.
• The Waste of Waiting disrupts flow, one of the main
principles of Lean Manufacturing, as such it is one of the
more serious of the seven wastes or 7 mudas of lean
manufacturing.
The waste of Overproduction
• The most serious of all of the seven wastes; the waste of
overproduction is making too much or too early. This is
usually because of working with oversize batches, long
lead times, poor supplier relations and a host of other
reasons. Overproduction leads to high levels of inventory
which mask many of the problems within your
organization.
• The aim should be to make only what is required when it
is required by the customer, the philosophy of Just in
Time (JIT), however many companies work on the
principle of Just in Case!
The Waste of Over-processing
• The waste of Overprocessing is where we use inappropriate
techniques, oversize equipment, working to tolerances that are
too tight, perform processes that are not required by the customer
and so forth. All of these things cost us time and money.
• One of the biggest examples of over-processing in most companies
is that of the “mega machine” that can do an operation faster than
any other, but every process flow has to be routed through it
causing scheduling complications, delays and so forth. In lean;
small is beautiful, use small appropriate machines where they are
needed in the flow, not break the flow to route through a highly
expensive monstrosity that the accountants insist is kept
The Waste of Defects
• The most obvious of the seven wastes, although not
always the easiest to detect before they reach your
customers. Quality errors that cause defects invariably
cost you far more than you expect. Every defective item
requires rework or replacement, it wastes resources and
materials, it creates paperwork, it can lead to lost
customers.
• The Waste of Defects should be prevented where
possible, better to prevent than to try to detect them,
implementation of pokayoke systems and autonomation
can help to prevent defects from occurring.
5S
5S is a set of Japanese words all starting with S that create
a structured approach for making an organised working
environment.
• Seiri (Sort)
• Seiton (Straighten, Set)
• Seiso (Shine, Sweep)
• Seiketsu (Standardize)
• Shitsuke (Sustain)
A3 method
The A3 problem solving method is employed in the
work environment to facilitate the solving of problems.
It is based on Demmings PDCA cycle.
The process literally uses an A3 piece of paper with the

structure described in the next slide. When workers
solve problems together, it acts as a very good
facilitator for robust problem solving. The A3 sheet is
then left up to remind the workers of the change made
as well as monitor the results of the change.
Value stream mapping
• Value stream mapping is a visual
representation of the entire value stream of a
company. From suppliers to the customer.
• Generally the current state is mapped out, and
then a future desired state is mapped out. The
difference between the current and future
state facilitates the creation of a plan to
improve the company’s processes.
Gemba
• One of the key ideas in lean is that
management should be on the shop
floor(Gemba). Not in their offices getting
second hand information about the
production process. The act of actually
observing the production process is very
powerful as it leads to kaizan and problem
solving.

Lean

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• Unnecessary motions are those movements of man or

The process literally uses an A3 piece of paper with the

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