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This article presents a brief history of lean manufacturing and then discusses the different facets or tools that are components of an effective lean culture and program.
The main tools of a lean manufacturing program are value stream mapping, 5S, total productive maintenance (TPM), single minute exchange of dies (SMED) and Six Sigma. There are also lesser-used tools, or subsets of the major tools, such as a Kaizen improvement culture, Hoshin Planning, mistake proofing, Jidoka, standardized work, and just-in-time inventories. Each of these tools focuses on certain aspects and areas of the manufacturing process in order to help improve costs and efficiencies in a company.
Before looking at the historical origins of lean manufacturing, first we must answer the important question: What is lean? Stated in the most basic form, lean manufacturing and a lean enterprise or business mean that the company is focused on supplying exactly what the customer wants, in the form they want it in, free of defects, at the exact time that they want it, with minimal waste in the process. The following principles are identified by the Lean Enterprise Institute as characteristics that identify a lean business:1
1. Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.
2. Identify all of the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating every step, every action, and every practice that does not create value.
3. Make the remaining value-creating steps occur in a tight and integrated sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer.
4. As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.
5. As these steps lead to greater transparency enabling managers and teams to eliminate further waste, managers pursue perfection through continuous improvement.
A top-to-bottom lean enterprise works towards these characteristics by being comprised of five elements:2
* A product development process.
* A supplier management process.
* A customer management process.
* An overarching enterprise management process.
* A production process from order to fulfillment.
Each of these lean processes has been proven superior to processes employed for the same tasks in a mass production type of environment.
The objective of this article is to present a brief history of lean manufacturing and then discuss...