Lean manufacturing is more than a set of tools for identifying and eliminating waste.  It is a total business philosophy that you can apply to all types and aspects of manufacturing.  The lean approach represents a potential gold mine because it increases productivity and quality, decreases waste and costs, and maximizes profits along with customer satisfaction. 

One thing must be remembered, however. Lean is an approach rather than a set of processes, and as such, must be embraced for the long term rather than as a one-time activity. Going lean can create more quality and value with less work, but only when it is an ongoing “way of life” rather than a once in a while test of waste and productivity.  If allowed to run their course, lean techniques can improve supply chains while creating better distributor, employee, and customer relations.

The basic concepts of lean manufacturing come from the Toyota Production System (TPS).  Driven by need, Toyota devised a system stressing quality and value rather than mediocrity and quotas.  They improved each step of their production process by building on previous ideas and formulating a way of thinking that stated that every part should be centered on the customer, and everything else is waste and should be eliminated.  They used this approach to create the number one automobile company in the world.

Two concepts that form the cornerstone to TPS and lean manufacturing are Just-In-Time (JIT), which deals with flow, and “Autonomation,” which deals with smart automation.  Flow and smart automation bring about the reduction of waste, another key component in lean manufacturing.  With the elimination of waste, quality improves while production time and costs are reduced, but must be something the company carries out on a regular basis.

The three basic types of waste that occur in production are:

• Muri – has to do with overburden, which is all the unreasonable work that management assigns to workers and machines because of poor organization.  Muri has to do with the planning and design phase of production.
• Mura – has to do with unevenness and fluctuations in the implementation and operations phase of production.  Waste occurs when there are fluctuations in volume and quality.
• Muda – has to do with waste elimination and is done at the end of the production process.  Management oversees Muda and uses what they learn to eliminate the deeper problems in Muri and Mura.  

Poor arrangement of the workplace in terms of workers and machinery and doing jobs inefficiently out of habit are major forms of waste in modern manufacturing.  Because of this, lean manufacturing requires a new, non-traditional way of looking at things.  This involves adopting the philosophy and culture of lean.  Unfortunately, most lean manufacturers in North America focus on lean tools and methods, which leads to problems in becoming truly lean.  The tools are workarounds to help implement a lean approach to business.

When you begin a lean approach to business, it needs to be an ongoing an ongoing task.  It’s not another exercise in cost cutting, but an attitude toward business where the customer and employees are an important part of the lean manufacturing approach.  It’s an approach that not only finds its beginning in Toyota, but also in the ideas of Henry Ford, who started the Ford Motor Company.

Five essential principles that characterize a lean approach to business.  These are:

1. Specify Value – Value represents the starting point in lean thinking and the ultimate customer defines this value in terms of a specific product that meets the customer’s needs at a specific price and time.   
2. Identify the Value Stream - The value stream details the steps needed to bring a product from concept and design to production and sale to the customer.  Identifying the value stream exposes areas of waste.
3. Flow – Once you specify value and identify the stream, then the task is to make the remaining value-creating steps flow.  This usually requires a shift in thinking by everyone involved in the process.
4. Pull – After implementation of the first three principles, the lean business can let the customer pull the product rather than having products pushed at the customer.  This cuts the need for large inventories.
5. Pursue Perfection – With the implementation of lean principles, you begin reduce effort, time, space, cost, and mistakes while improving the product to more of what the customer wants.  This leads to greater perfection.

In order to foster a lean way of thinking, Toyota developed a mentoring process, Senpai and Kohai.  The leader promotes the lean approach in a business throughout its organizational structure.  The idea is to make the work simple enough to understand, do, and manage so employees know what is expected of them at all times.  

Lean manufacturing tools are adapted to help businesses with the process of becoming lean.  These tools include:

• 5 S – Derives from five Japanese words beginning with ‘s’.  The purpose of the tool is to simplify your work environment, reduce waste, and improve safety, quality, and efficiency.
• Kanban – This tool is used in pull systems as a signaling device to trigger action.  Traditionally it used cards to signal the need for an item.  It can trigger the movement, production, or supply of a unit in a production chain. 
• Poka-Yoke – A mechanism that helps an equipment operator avoid mistakes.  Its objective is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correction, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.
• Heijunka – This is a system designed to level the production volume and production by product type.  A Heijunka Box is basically a board with boxes that lays out times with cards that let employees know what they are doing at specific times during the production schedule.

Several workbooks, simulations, and computer software programs are available to help facilitate your move to lean.  They are the Learning To See Workbook, Lean Manufacturing Simulation Game, Lean Workshops, and Lean Manufacturing Software Solutions.