What is lean thinking?To understand lean manufacturing, we must understand thinking behind it. Lean thinking is the starting point of lean manufacturing. Lean thinking is originated by lean principles and concepts. Basic idea behind lean is the elimination of waste from the system. Every manufacturing system has wastes generated in its operation. These wastes are identified in lean and used as possible points of improvement. Small, incremental changes to the system will result a steadily performing and continuously improving manufacturing facility or a service station. Lean thinking defines wastes and identifies activities which lead to wastes in the system. Then these wastes are removed systematically from the system in a way that total system is improved by eliminating the sub optimization. Looking at the bigger picture is one of the key aspects of lean manufacturing. This requires coming out of the boundaries of departmentalized or sub optimized thinking. Another very important aspect of lean thinking is the identification of value addition from the customer’s point of view. In simple terms lean thinkers will identify the activates or operations in the process which will be paid by the customer. For an example moving semi finished product one place to another will incur a cost but will not add any value to the product. So the customer would not want to pay for this activity hence lean identifies this as a waste. Moving away from the push systems to the pull systems is another key lean thought which will give lean a unique advantage over conventional manufacturing systems. Any traditional manufacturer would like to manufacture to the maximum capacities of the particular workstation and ask the other processes to do the same. People are pushed by the activities down line to keep to their phase regardless of the actual customer requirements. This leads to over production which is one of the key wastes identified in lean manufacturing. But in lean manufacturing customer initiates the demand and suppliers respond to that demand in a timely manner to fulfill that demand. This customer supplier manufacturing relationship is maintained throughout the supply chain from the customer to the suppliers as well as in manufacturing process itself. Every workstation is a supplier for the next workstation. Every workstation is a customer for the work station prior to that. As lean thinking is based on customer supplier relationship, all the external parties are considered as partners not just as suppliers and customers. This empowers the concept of lean enterprise, where suppliers, customers and all the other influencing parties act together to deliver the expected results in most timely and cost effective manner for all the parties involved. One another important aspect of lean manufacturing is its process orientation. Lean thinkers believe that if the processes are set and followed correctly, the expected result will come. This leads to standardization of processes and work. Lean thinkers are prime movers of any lean organization. They spread their thinking patterns across all the members and make the lean implementation a reality. They think outside of the conventional manufacturing context. They think from the customer’s point of view and continuously try to improve the standards of the organization. |
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