Lean Manufacturing Process Improvement

“LEAN MANUFACTURING”, you hear it everywhere, everyday, you can’t escape it, but what is it? We all have our ideas, however, if you haven’t been formally trained or deeply involved, odds are, you’re thinking only of the cost savings side. Think back when ISO became all the rage. The basic understanding was that we would hire a quality engineer, put some standards and checklists in place, and magically, all our problems would be solved. In a short amount of time and with a reasonably small budget; our defects would vanish, our lead times and inventories would shrink, the customers would beat a path to our doors, and our profits would soar. Company after company embraced the concept, and a considerable percentage of those companies soon abandoned it as too costly and time consuming when compared to the immediate financial returns.

Now, as we are deeply entrenched in the lean manufacturing era, most small to medium businesses are of the same mindset. Just as we saw company after company abandon the ISO certification process because it was too time consuming, costly and wasn’t bringing those throngs of customers to our doorsteps, so too are many companies abandoning, or in many cases, taking only a random or unsystematic approach to this concept.

LONG TERM METHODOLOGY

Lean manufacturing is a continuous and living entity. To approach it as a quick fix that will bring increased profits and efficiencies is a guarantee of failure. Although the lean process has been documented in countless papers, lectures, seminars, and accredited training programs, many organizations lack even the basic fundamental processes and tools needed to implement lean manufacturing. Most failures can be attributed to this lack of a solid foundation on which lean will be built, and as a result, we are quickly overwhelmed by the amount of work and capital that must be spent before we can even begin to implement the lean initiatives. In a relatively short time we lose enthusiasm, get increasingly bogged down in seemingly mundane tasks, we eventually succumb to immediate time and budget constraints, and before we realized it, the program has been pushed to the back seat or shelved altogether.