What is lean manufacturing?
Lean consumption
Lean Consumption is based on Lean Manufacturing, also known as Lean Production. Lean Manufacturing was pioneered by Toyota founder Taiichi Ohno, and revolutionized and streamlined the manufacturing industry. Whereas Lean Manufacturing set out ways to streamline manufacturing processes, Lean Consumption "minimizes customers' time and effort by delivering exactly what they want when and where they want it". Processes are focused on eliminating waste, while increasing productivity, speed of operation and improving customer interaction.
Lean construction
In the UK, a major R&D project, "Building Down Barriers", was launched in 1997 to adapt the Toyota Production System for use in the construction sector. The resulting supply chain management toolset was tested and refined on two pilot projects and the comprehensive and detailed process-based toolset was published in 2000 as the 'Building Down Barriers Handbook of Supply Chain Management-The Essentials'. The project demonstrated very clearly that lean thinking would only deliver major performance improvements if the construction sector learned from the extensive experience of other business sectors. Lean thinking must become the way that all the firms in the design and construction supply chain co-operate with each other at a strategic level that over-arches individual projects. In the aerospace sector, these long-term supply-side relationships are called a 'Virtual Company', in other business sectors they are called an 'Extended Lean Enterprise'.
Lean software development
The term lean software development originated in a book by the same name, written by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck in 2003. The book restates traditional lean principles, as well as a set of 22 "tools" and compares the tools to corresponding agile practices. The Poppendiecks' involvement in the Agile software development community, including talks at several Agile conferences has resulted in such concepts being more widely accepted within the Agile community.
Norman Bodek
Many of these topics form the building blocks of the Toyota Production System, which, in turn, is the basis for what came to be called Lean Manufacturing in America. So, for example, a book on Lean Accounting can be seen as Westerner's guide to creating a Toyota-like accounting system.
Management accounting
In the mid- to late-1990s several books were written about accounting in the lean enterprise (companies implementing elements of the Toyota Production System). The term "lean accounting" was coined during that period. These books contest that traditional accounting methods are better suited for mass production and do not support or measure good business practices in just-in-time manufacturing and services. The movement reached a tipping point during the 2005 Lean Accounting Summit in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. 320 individuals attended and discussed the advantages of a new approach to accounting in the lean enterprise. 520 individuals attended the 2nd annual conference in 2006 and it has varied between 250 and 600 attendees since that time.
Lean dynamics
Like lean manufacturing, lean dynamics is a variation on the theme of creating efficiencies and greater value by optimizing flow rather than by maximizing economies of scale. As such, it represents an important chapter in the broader discussion of Taylorism, Fordisim, Alfred Sloan's standard volume methodology, Peter Drucker's philosophy on the "theory of the business" and Genichi Taguchi's analysis of loss. Its general philosophy has grown in popularity over recent years, in large part because of the increasingly challenging circumstances faced by the global business world (particularly evident during the 2008–2009 worldwide economic downturn.)
Lean manufacturing
"Muri" is all the unreasonable work that management imposes on workers and machines because of poor organization, such as carrying heavy weights, moving things around, dangerous tasks, even working significantly faster than usual. It is pushing a person or a machine beyond its natural limits. This may simply be asking a greater level of performance from a process than it can handle without taking shortcuts and informally modifying decision criteria. Unreasonable work is almost always a cause of multiple variations.
Lean manufacturing
Toyota's development of ideas that later became lean may have started at the turn of the 20th century with Sakichi Toyoda, in a textile factory with looms that stopped themselves when a thread broke. This became the seed of autonomation and "Jidoka". Toyota's journey with just-in-time (JIT) may have started back in 1934 when it moved from textiles to produce its first car. Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, directed the engine casting work and discovered many problems in their manufacturing. He decided he must stop the repairing of poor quality by intense study of each stage of the process. In 1936, when Toyota won its first truck contract with the Japanese government, his processes hit new problems and he developed the "Kaizen" improvement teams.
Lean dynamics
Lean dynamics is particularly versatile in that it can be applied to a wide range of manufacturing and service industries. Its methods have been studied for Aerospace and Defense (particularly as applied to procuring hard to get spare parts), and medical, and distinguishes the few that stand out during crisis such as airlines, and retail.
Lean manufacturing
Both lean and TPS can be seen as a loosely connected set of potentially competing principles whose goal is cost reduction by the elimination of waste. These principles include: pull processing, perfect first-time quality, waste minimization, continuous improvement, flexibility, building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers, autonomation, load leveling and production flow and visual control. The disconnected nature of some of these principles perhaps springs from the fact that the TPS has grown pragmatically since 1948 as it responded to the problems it saw within its own production facilities. Thus what one sees today is the result of a 'need' driven learning to improve where each step has built on previous ideas and not something based upon a theoretical framework.
Lean CFP driven
The reentrant flow does require a certain level of flexibility, which in terms of Lean, could be seen as muda (Waste). The necessary flexibility, also in order to meet fluctuations in customer demand, requires the companies to apply other tools to measure and forecast performance and this is what Lean CFP Driven provides to the Semiconductor Industry. Lean CFP Driven adds the Operating Curve to evaluate the factors "utilization", "cycle time" and "variability" which cannot be done through implementation of Traditional Lean.
Lean manufacturing
Although the elimination of waste may seem like a simple and clear subject, it is noticeable that waste is often very conservatively identified. This then hugely reduces the potential of such an aim. The elimination of waste is the goal of lean, and Toyota defined three broad types of waste: "muda", "muri" and "mura"; for many lean implementations this list shrinks to the first waste type only with reduced corresponding benefits.
Lean project management
Lean approach makes obvious what adds value by reducing everything else which does not add value. This management philosophy is derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and identified as "lean" only in the 1990s. TPS is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven wastes to improve overall customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved. The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker, has focused attention on how it has achieved this success.
Lean laboratory
The principles of lean manufacturing have been difficult at times to migrate to laboratories because they are quite different from manufacturing environments. In the hospital laboratory, for example, difficulties arise with the "staunch adherence to traditional laboratory practices, complexity of workflow, and marked variability in sample numbers." In pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical labs, "the limiting belief" that procedures are so different that lean won't work often slow down adoption. Compared to manufacturing environments, most analytical and microbiological laboratories have a relatively low volume of samples but a high degree of variability and complexity. Many standard lean tools are not a good fit; however, lean can still be applied to these types of labs. A generic approach is not suitable for laboratories, but careful adaptation of the techniques based on a thorough understanding of lab operations will deliver significant benefits in terms of cost, speed, or both.
Lean IT
Related to the aforementioned issue of fragmented IT departments is the lack of integration across the entire supply chain, including not only all business partners but also consumers. To this end, lean IT consultants have recently proposed so-called lean consumption of products and services as a complement to lean production. In this regard, the processes of provision and consumption are tightly integrated and streamlined to minimize total cost and waste and to create new sources of value.
Just-in-time manufacturing
Three more books which include JIT implementations were published in 1993, 1995, and 1996, which are start-up years of the lean manufacturing/lean management movement that was launched in 1990 with publication of the book, "The Machine That Changed the World". That one, along with other books, articles, and case studies on lean, were supplanting JIT terminology in the 1990s and beyond. The same period, saw the rise of books and articles with similar concepts and methodologies but with alternative names, including "cycle time management", "time-based competition", "quick-response manufacturing", flow, and "pull-based production systems".
Lean manufacturing
Again Franklin's "The Way to Wealth" says the following about carrying unnecessary inventory. "You call them goods; but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and, perhaps, they may [be bought] for less than they cost; but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says, 'Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.' In another place, he says, 'Many have been ruined by buying good penny worths'." Henry Ford cited Franklin as a major influence on his own business practices, which included Just-in-time manufacturing.
Warehouse execution system
As in a MES Manufacturing Execution System the line between higher level and lower level control is blurred and not well defined, so it is with a WES. Manufacturing operations are significantly more mature than distribution when considering lean practices. This is evidenced by the total lack of a Wikipedia article on "Lean distribution". Manufacturing operations face the same challenges of distribution operations having many different work cells or processes controlled by vendor provided control systems. A special category of software was created for manufacturing to integrate the overall production and coordinate the efforts of all production resources.
Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma is a method that relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste and reducing variation.This method was first put forward by Chairul Ichsan, an engineer at Chevron Pacific Indonesia. It combines lean manufacturing/lean enterprise and Six Sigma to eliminate the eight kinds of waste (muda): 
Lean six sigma not only reduces process defects and waste, but also provides a framework for overall organizational culture change.
Waste is defined by Mr. Fujio Cho of Toyota as "anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, space, and workers time, which are absolutely essential to add value to the product."
Lean software development
There has been a traditional belief in most businesses about the decision-making in the organization – the managers tell the workers how to do their own job. In a "Work-Out technique", the roles are turned – the managers are taught how to listen to the developers, so they can explain better what actions might be taken, as well as provide suggestions for improvements. The lean approach follows the Agile Principle "find good people and let them do their own job," encouraging progress, catching errors, and removing impediments, but not micro-managing.
Lean manufacturing
The espoused goals of lean manufacturing systems differ between various authors. While some maintain an internal focus, e.g. to increase profit for the organization, others claim that improvements should be done for the sake of the customer.
Traditional engineering
Traditional manufacturing has been driven by sales forecasts that companies need to produce and stockpile inventory to support. Lean manufacturing is based on the concept that production should be driven by the actual customer demands and requirements. Instead of pushing product to the marketplace, it is pulled through by the customers' actual needs.
Lean manufacturing
The appliance of JIT in supply chain system is the key issue of Lean implementation in global scale. How do the supply partners avoid causing production flow? Global firms should make more suppliers who can compete with each other in order to get the best quality and lower the risk of production flow at the same time.
Lean startup
Use of the word "lean" to describe the streamlined production system of lean manufacturing was popularized by the 1990 book "The Machine That Changed the World". The Toyota Production System pioneered by Taiichi Ohno combined flow principles that had been used by Henry Ford since the early 1900s with innovations such as the TWI programs introduced to Japan in 1951.
Kaizen
By improving standardized programmes and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside business and productivity.
Lean product development
An essential point about these differences is summarized in the advice Jim Womack gives Harley Davidson: ""Don't try to bring lean manufacturing upstream to product development. The application of Lean in product development and manufacturing are different. Some aspects may look similar, but they are not! Be leery of an expert with experience in lean manufacturing that claims to know product development""
Lean Cuisine
Lean Cuisine was created in 1981 to provide a healthier alternative to Stouffer's frozen meals. It began with ten items and has expanded to include 100+ different meals. The brand name "Lean Cuisine" is considered by the FDA as a nutrient content claim, so all Lean Cuisine items are required to meet the "lean" criteria of less than 10 g fat, 4.5 g or less saturated fat, and less than 95 mg cholesterol. Lean Cuisine items are also calorie-controlled, with most items in the 200-300 calorie range, with a minimum of 140 calories and a maximum of 400 calories. A major competitor of Lean Cuisine is Healthy Choice, manufactured by ConAgra Foods. It is required to meet "healthy" criteria by the FDA, since it includes "healthy" in its brand name. This includes a requirement to be below 480 mg of sodium in addition to fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol targets.
Jabil
Jabil's company culture uses the concept of lean manufacturing which is the process of driving improvement and innovation by reducing waste and increasing process speed. In September 2011, Jabil hosted 14,000 Kaizen Blitz events. Kaizen is a Japanese term for improvement and Kaizen events are focused projects that aim to improve processes. Many of Jabil's senior leaders are currently undergoing or have already achieved Six Sigma Black Belt Certification (a Jack Welch principle).
Lean manufacturing
While Ford is renowned for his production line, it is often not recognized how much effort he put into removing the fitters' work to make the production line possible. Previous to the use, Ford's car's components were fitted and reshaped by a skilled engineer at the point of use, so that they would connect properly. By enforcing very strict specification and quality criteria on component manufacture, he eliminated this work almost entirely, reducing manufacturing effort by between 60-90%. However, Ford's mass production system failed to incorporate the notion of "pull production" and thus often suffered from overproduction.
Lean services
Lean services is the application of the lean manufacturing concept to service operations. It is distinct in that "Lean services" are not concerned with the making of ‘hard’ products.
Lean laboratory
At its simplest, leveling the load (overall workload) and the mix (the mix of sample types) is about putting the same amount of work into the lab on a daily basis. This is probably the most critical step and potentially the most beneficial for the majority of testing laboratories. Successfully leveling a volatile load and mix will significantly improve productivity and/or lead time. The productivity improvement can be used to provide additional capacity or converted into a cost reduction.
Lean enterprise
Alfred Sloan of General Motors further developed the concept of assembly line production by building a process called mass production that allowed scale and variety. This process enabled large amounts of standardized products to run through assembly lines while still being able to produce more variety and compete against Ford's single offering.
Lean manufacturing
Continuous Improvement breaks down into three basic principles:Respect For People is less known outside of Toyota, and essentially involves two defining principles:While lean is seen by many as a generalization of the Toyota Production System into other industries and contexts, there are some acknowledged differences that seem to have developed in implementation:Lean principles have been successfully applied to various sectors and services, such as call centers and healthcare. In the former, lean's waste reduction practices have been used to reduce handle time, within and between agent variation, accent barriers, as well as attain near perfect process adherence. In the latter, several hospitals have adopted the idea of "lean hospital", a concept that priorizes the patient, thus increasing the employee commitment and motivation, as well as boosting medical quality and cost effectiveness.
Lean enterprise
After 2010, more and more enterprises are adopting this new branch of lean enterprise (lean startup) since it provides principles and methodologies for non-internet enterprises to enter in new markets or offer goods and services in new form factors with less time, labor, and capital. For internet and software enterprises (by tradition), the Lean startup variant of lean enterprise enabled them to remain competitive with new technologies and services that are rapidly coming out to market without exclusively resorting to mergers and acquisitions, and being able to retain internal innovation ecosystem competency.
Operations management
Lean manufacturing is an approach to production which arose in Toyota between the end of World War II and the seventies. It comes mainly from the ideas of Taiichi Ohno and Toyoda Sakichi which are centered on the complementary notions of just in time and autonomation (jidoka), all aimed at reducing waste (usually applied in PDCA style). Some additional elements are also fundamental: production smoothing (Heijunka), capacity buffers, setup reduction, cross-training and plant layout.
Lean thinking
In the lean thinking tradition, the teacher should not explain but demonstrate – learning is the full responsibility of the learner. However, to create the proper conditions for learning the lean tradition has adopted a number of practices from Toyota's own learning curve. The aim of these practices is not to improve processes per se but to create an environment for teachable and learnable moments.There are two controversies surrounding the word “lean,” one concerning the image of lean with the general public and the other within the lean movement itself.
Lean manufacturing
Lean implementation emphasizes the importance of optimizing work flow through strategic operational procedures while minimizing waste and being adaptable. Flexibility is required to allow production leveling (Heijunka) using tools such as SMED, but have their analogues in other processes such as research and development (R&D). However, adaptability is often constrained, and therefore may not require significant investment. More importantly, all of these concepts have to be acknowledged by employees who develop the products and initiate processes that deliver value. The cultural and managerial aspects of lean are arguably more important than the actual tools or methodologies of production itself. There are many examples of lean tool implementation without sustained benefit, and these are often blamed on weak understanding of lean throughout the whole organization.
Lean startup
The Build–Measure–Learn loop emphasizes speed as a critical ingredient to product development. A team or company's effectiveness is determined by its ability to ideate, quickly build a minimum viable product of that idea, measure its effectiveness in the market, and learn from that experiment. In other words, it's a learning cycle of turning ideas into products, measuring customers' reactions and behaviors against built products, and then deciding whether to persevere or pivot the idea; this process repeats as many times as necessary. The phases of the loop are: Ideas → Build → Product → Measure → Data → Learn.
Patricia A. Gabow
Under Gabow's leadership, Denver Health introduced several business-based improvement systems to streamline operations, cut excessive spending, and improve employee satisfaction and patient care. Most notable was the "lean" quality-improvement system based on the Toyota Production System, introduced in 2005. The "lean" management system cuts waste and streamlines processes without restricting access to healthcare by insured patients or necessitating staff layoffs. As one example of the "lean" system, Denver Health increased the square footage of its public health facilities by 30 percent, while reducing its supply costs by 50 percent. In 2014 Gabow published a book on the use of the "lean" system at Denver Health, titled "Lean Prescription: Powerful Medicine for Our Ailing Healthcare System". She and her co-author Philip L. Goodman received the 2015 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for the book, while Denver Health itself received the Shingo Bronze Medallion.
Computer-aided lean management
The creation of an integrated system model removes the barriers posed by the silos or stovepipes inherent in the departmentalization of most companies. Integration enables lean uses of information for the creation of actionable knowledge. CALM strives to create such a lean management approach to running the company through the rigors of software enforcement. From this software enforcement comes clear policy and procedures that are adhered to, activity-based costing, measurement of effectiveness, and the capability of using advanced algorithms for dramatic improvements in optimization of resources. CALM creates business capabilities through software to enable technology application, streamlining of processes, and a lean organizational structure. The methodology is based on a commonsense approach for running a business, by measuring of actions taken and using those measurements to design improved processes in order to drive out inefficiencies.
Lean manufacturing
It was with Taiichi Ohno at Toyota that these themes came together. He built on the already existing internal schools of thought and spread their breadth and use into what has now become the Toyota Production System (TPS). It is principally from the TPS (which was widely referred to in the 1980s as "just-in-time manufacturing"), but now including many other sources, that lean production is developing. Norman Bodek wrote the following in his foreword to a reprint of Ford's "Today and Tomorrow:"
Cellular manufacturing
Case studies in just-in-time and lean manufacturing are replete with impressive quantitative measures along those lines. For example, BAE Systems, Platform Solutions (Fort Wayne, Ind.), producing aircraft engine monitors and controls, implemented cells for 80 percent of production, reducing customer lead time 90 percent, work-in-process inventory 70 percent, space for one product family from 6,000 square feet to 1,200 square feet, while increasing product reliability 300 percent, multi-skilling the union-shop work force, and being designated an "Industry Week" Best Plant for the year 2000. By five years later, rework and scrap had been cut 50 percent, new product introduction cycles 60 percent, and transactions 90 percent, while also increasing inventory turns three-fold and service turn times 30 percent, and being awarded a Shingo Prize for the year 2005.
Lean startup
The Lean Canvas is a version of the Business Model Canvas adapted by Ash Maurya in 2010 specifically for startups. The Lean Canvas focuses on addressing broad customer problems and solutions and delivering them to customer segments through a unique value proposition. "Problem" and "solution" blocks replace the "key partners" and "key activities" blocks in the Business Model Canvas, while "key metrics" and "unfair advantage" blocks replace the "key resources" and "customer relationships" blocks, respectively.
Continuous-flow manufacturing
Continuous-flow manufacturing, or Repetitive-Flow Manufacturing, is an approach to discrete manufacturing that contrasts with batch production. It is associated with a just-in-time and kanban production approach, and calls for an ongoing examination and improvement efforts which ultimately requires integration of all elements of the production system. The goal is an optimally balanced production line with little waste, the lowest possible cost, on-time and defect-free production.
Lean construction
The UK 'Building Down Barriers Handbook of Supply Chain Management-The Essentials' states that: 'The commercial core of supply chain management is setting up long-term relationships based on improving the value of what the supply chain delivers, improving quality and reducing underlying costs through taking out waste and inefficiency. This is the opposite of 'business as usual' in the construction sector, where people do things on project after project in the same old inefficient ways, forcing each other to give up profits and overhead recovery in order to deliver at what seems the market price. What results is a fight over who keeps any of the meagre margins that result from each project, or attempts to recoup 'negative margins' through 'claims', The last thing that receives time or energy in this desperate, project-by-project gladiatorial battle for survival is consideration of how to reduce underlying costs or improve quality'.
Lean manufacturing
One of the dislocative effects of lean is in the area of key performance indicators (KPI). The KPIs by which a plant/facility are judged will often be driving behaviour, because the KPIs themselves assume a particular approach to the work being done. This can be an issue where, for example a truly lean, Fixed Repeating Schedule (FRS) and JIT approach is adopted, because these KPIs will no longer reflect performance, as the assumptions on which they are based become invalid. It is a key leadership challenge to manage the impact of this KPI chaos within the organization.
Agile retail
The Agile ideology can be traced back to the Lean manufacturing principles developed at Toyota in the 1950s. Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. The basic intention is to maximize efficiency during manufacturing with a view to enhance productivity and lower costs. Back then, the Agile retail concept was applied mainly to the manufacturing of hard goods such as automobiles.
Lean construction
While lean construction’s main tool for making design and construction processes more predictable is the Last Planner System (see below) and derivatives of it, other lean tools already proven in manufacturing have been adapted to the construction industry with equal success. These include: 5S, Kanban, Kaizen events, quick setup/changeover, Poka Yoke, visual control and 5 Whys (Mastroianni and Abdelhamid 2003, Salem et al. 2005).
Lean dynamics
Lean dynamics has its roots in a global study of lean manufacturing in the aerospace industry aimed at understanding how to break its cycle of cost escalation that was making new products unaffordable. These results were described in the Shingo Prize winning book, "Breaking the Cost Barrier". This study showed that directly targeting “waste” reduction as the focal point for lean programs does not lead to significant cost savings. Instead, it provided strong evidence that emphasis should be placed on applying lean principles to mitigate the amplification of variation that causes workarounds. Addressing this variation was critical to overcoming the disruption that often causes waste to accumulate in the first place. Other sources cited this, identifying occurrences across other industries.
Lean construction
The term "lean construction" was coined by the International Group for Lean Construction in its first meeting in 1993 (Gleeson et al. 2007). "Construction" in "Lean Construction" refers to the entire industry and not the phase during which construction takes place. Thus, Lean Construction is for owners, architects, designers, engineers, constructors, suppliers & end users.
Lean manufacturing
The role of the leaders within the organization is the fundamental element of sustaining the progress of lean thinking. Experienced kaizen members at Toyota, for example, often bring up the concepts of "Senpai", "Kohai", and "Sensei", because they strongly feel that transferring of Toyota culture down and across Toyota can only happen when more experienced Toyota Sensei continuously coach and guide the less experienced lean champions.
Agile manufacturing
Agile manufacturing is an approach to manufacturing which is focused on meeting the needs of customers while maintaining high standards of quality and controlling the overall costs involved in the production of a particular product. This approach is geared towards companies working in a highly competitive environment, where small variations in performance and product delivery can make a huge difference in the long term to a company's survival and reputation among consumers.
Lean manufacturing
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a set of performance metrics that fit well in a lean environment. Also, PMTS, methods-time measurement, cost analysis and perhaps time study can be used to evaluate the wastes and IT effectiveness in the operational processes. For example, Jun-Ing Ker and Yichuan Wang analyze two prescribing technologies, namely no carbon required (NCR) and digital scanning technologies to quantify the advantages of the medication ordering, transcribing, and dispensing process in a multi-hospital health system. With comparison between these two technologies, the statistical analysis results show a significant reduction on process times by adopting digital scanning technology. The results indicated a reduction of 54.5% in queue time, 32.4% in order entry time, 76.9% in outgoing delay time, and 67.7% in outgoing transit time with the use of digital scanning technology.
Eric Ries
After leaving IMVU, Ries joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as a venture advisor, and six months later started advising startups independently. Based on his experiences, he developed a methodology based on select management principles to help startups succeed. The lean startup methodology originates from a combination of ideas such as lean manufacturing, which seeks to increase value-creating practices and eliminate wasteful practices, and Steve Blank's customer development methodology.
Lean CFP driven
Lean CFP (Complex Flow Production) Driven is a new approach which takes into account not only the widely implemented Lean manufacturing, but combines the principles of Lean with the Operating Curve, an approach based on the theoretical approach of Queuing Theory developed in academia in the 1970s. The goal of Lean CFP Driven is to eliminate waste in order to achieve higher quality, increase productivity and at the same time understand the relationship between utilization, lead time and variability in order to maximize performance within the semiconductor industry.
LARG SCM
LARG Supply Chain Management attempts to put together Lean, Agile, Resilient, and Green approaches in Supply Chain Management. Lean Supply Chain Managements aims are to maintain close to zero inventories and reduce work-in-process; Agile goes for quick responses to customer inquiries and market changes while controlling costs and quality; Resilience is about reacting quickly to disruptions impacting supply chain; and Green refers to sustainability in supply chain through low emissions to the environment and a recycling strategy for products.
Cycle time variation
Cycle time variation is a metric and philosophy for continuous improvement with the aim of driving down the deviations in the time it takes to produce successive units on a production line. It supports organizations' application of lean manufacturing or lean production by eliminating wasteful expenditure of resources. It is distinguished from some of the more common applications by its different focus of creating a structure for progressively reducing the sources of internal variation that leads to workarounds and disruption causing these wastes to accumulate in the first place. Although it is often used as an indicator of lean progress, its use promotes a structured approach to reducing disruption that impacts efficiency, quality, and value.
Lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing attempts to make obvious what adds value, through reducing everything else (because it is not adding value). This management philosophy is derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and identified as "lean" only in the 1990s. TPS is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota "seven wastes" to improve overall customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved. The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker, has focused attention on how it has achieved this success.
Six Sigma
In , some practitioners have combined Six Sigma ideas with lean manufacturing to create a methodology named Lean Six Sigma. The Lean Six Sigma methodology views lean manufacturing, which addresses process flow and waste issues, and Six Sigma, with its focus on variation and design, as complementary disciplines aimed at promoting "business and operational excellence".
Lean IT
As an emerging area in IT management (see Deployment and Commercial Support), lean IT has relatively few reference implementations. Moreover, whereas much of the supporting theory and methodology is grounded in the more established field of lean manufacturing, adaptation of such theory and methodology to the digital service-oriented process of IT is likewise only just beginning. This lack makes implementation challenging, as evidenced by the problems experienced with the March 2008 opening of London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. British airports authority BAA and airline British Airways (BA), which has exclusive use of the new terminal, used process methodologies adapted from the motor industry to speed development and achieve cost savings in developing and integrating systems at the new terminal. However, the opening was marred by baggage handling backlogs, staff parking problems, and cancelled flights.
Lean manufacturing
Similarly, commonly used accounting systems developed to support mass production are no longer appropriate for companies pursuing lean. Lean accounting provides truly lean approaches to business management and financial reporting.
Lean manufacturing
The difference between these two approaches is not the goal itself, but rather the prime approach to achieving it. The implementation of smooth flow exposes quality problems that already existed, and thus waste reduction naturally happens as a consequence. The advantage claimed for this approach is that it naturally takes a system-wide perspective, whereas a waste focus sometimes wrongly assumes this perspective.
Gemba
In lean manufacturing, the idea of "genba" is that the problems are visible, and the best improvement ideas will come from going to the "genba." The "gemba" walk, much like Management By Walking Around (MBWA), is an activity that takes management to the front lines to look for waste and opportunities to practice "genba kaizen," or practical shop floor improvement.
Lean Six Sigma
5S is a lean practice used to keep production workspace orderly and keep the workforce committed to maintaining order.
Lean manufacturing
After adopting the lean approach, both managers and employees experience change. Therefore, decisive leaders are needed when starting on a lean journey. There are several requirements to control the lean journey. First and most importantly, experts recommend that the organization have its own lean plan, developed by the lean Leadership. In other words, the lean team provides suggestions for the leader who then makes the actual decisions about what to implement. Second, coaching is recommended when the organization starts off on its lean journey. They will impart their knowledge and skills to shopfloor staff and the lean implementation will be much more efficient. Third, the metrics or measurements used for measuring lean and improvements are extremely important. It will enable collection of the data required for informed decision-making by a leader. One cannot successfully implement lean without sufficient aptitude at measuring the process and outputs. To control and improve results going forward, one must see and measure, i.e. map, what is happening now.
Lean enterprise
The lean startup principles, developed from 2008 from lean manufacturing, also now contribute to our understanding of lean enterprise:Henry Ford developed a process called assembly line production. This is a manufacturing process in which parts are added as the assembly moves from work station to work station where parts are added in sequence until final assembly is produced.
Paul Akers
That idea turned into a manufacturing business that required employees, products, equipment, inventory, and space to make it all happen. Overwhelmed with a multitude of tasks, personnel, and major financial decisions he faced on a daily basis that could either make or break the business, Paul realized the need for another solution. That search led to the concept of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (TPS). It had an immediate and positive impact and was instrumental in propelling FastCap forward.
DFMA
DFMA is used as the basis for concurrent engineering studies to provide guidance to the design team in simplifying the product structure, to reduce manufacturing and assembly costs, and to quantify improvements. The practice of applying DFMA is to identify, quantify and eliminate waste or inefficiency in a product design. DFMA is therefore a component of Lean Manufacturing
DFMA is also used as a benchmarking tool to study competitors’ products, and as a should cost tool to assist in supplier negotiations.
Lean manufacturing
Now known by the acronym TIMWOODS created by Lean/Sigma Black Belt Michael Moran of the Moran3 Company in 2000
Eventually, an eighth "muda" was defined by Womack et al. (2003); it was described as manufacturing goods or services that do not meet customer demand or specifications. Many others have added the "waste of unused human talent" to the original seven wastes. For example, Six Sigma includes the waste of Skills, referred to as "under-utilizing capabilities and delegating tasks with inadequate training". Other additional wastes added were for example "space". These wastes were not originally a part of the seven deadly wastes defined by Taiichi Ohno in TPS, but were found to be useful additions in practice. In 1999 Geoffrey Mika in his book, "Kaizen Event Implementation Manual" added three more forms of waste that are now universally accepted; The waste associated with working to the wrong metrics or no metrics, the waste associated with not utilizing a complete worker by not allowing them to contribute ideas and suggestions and be part of Participative Management, and lastly the waste attributable to improper use of computers; not having the proper software, training on use and time spent surfing, playing games or just wasting time. For a complete listing of the "old" and "new" wastes see Bicheno and Holweg (2009)
Computer-integrated manufacturing
Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) is the manufacturing approach of using computers to control the entire production process. This integration allows individual processes to exchange information with each other and initiate actions. Although manufacturing can be faster and less error-prone by the integration of computers, the main advantage is the ability to create automated manufacturing processes. Typically CIM relies on closed-loop control processes, based on real-time input from sensors. It is also known as "flexible design and manufacturing".
Smart manufacturing
Smart manufacturing is a broad category of manufacturing with the goal of optimizing concept generation, production, and product transaction. While manufacturing can be defined as the multi-phase process of creating a product out of raw materials, smart manufacturing is a subset that employs computer control and high levels of adaptability. Smart manufacturing aims to take advantage of advanced information and manufacturing technologies to enable flexibility in physical processes to address a dynamic and global market. There is increased workforce training for such flexibility and use of the technology rather than specific tasks as is customary in traditional manufacturing.
Lean project management
The term Kanban comes from manufacturing but was adapted for software development by David Anderson when he was working at Microsoft in 2005 and inherited an underperforming maintenance team. The success of the approach in that environment, led Anderson to experiment with Kanban in projects, with similarly positive results. As Anderson publicised his findings through talks and his book , software developers began to experiment with Kanban and it is now one of the most widely used methods for managing agile software development projects.
Production leveling
Production leveling, also known as production smoothing or – by its Japanese original term – , is a technique for reducing the Mura (Unevenness) which in turn reduces muda (waste). It was vital to the development of production efficiency in the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing. The goal is to produce intermediate goods at a constant rate so that further processing may also be carried out at a constant and predictable rate.
Digital manufacturing
Digital Manufacturing is an integrated approach to manufacturing that is centered around a computer system. The transition to digital manufacturing has become more popular with the rise in the quantity and quality of computer systems in manufacturing plants. As more automated tools have become used in manufacturing plants it has become necessary to model, simulate, and analyze all of the machines, tooling, and input materials in order to optimize the manufacturing process. Overall, digital manufacturing can be seen sharing the same goals as computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM), flexible manufacturing, lean manufacturing, and design for manufacturability (DFM). The main difference is that digital manufacturing was evolved for use in the computerized world.
Project management
Lean project management uses the principles from lean manufacturing to focus on delivering value with less waste and reduced time.
Computer-aided lean management
Computer-aided lean management, in business management, is a methodology of developing and using software-controlled, lean systems integration. Its goal is to drive innovation towards cost and cycle-time savings. It attempts to create an efficient use of capital and resources through the development and use of one integrated system model to run a business's planning, engineering, design, maintenance, and operations.
Lean manufacturing
The other way to avoid market risk and control the supply efficiently is to cut down in stock. P&G has done the goal to co-operate with Walmart and other wholesales companies by building the response system of stocks directly to the suppliers companies.
Lean-burn
One of the newest lean-burn technologies available in automobiles currently in production uses very precise control of fuel injection, a strong air–fuel swirl created in the combustion chamber, a new linear air–fuel sensor (LAF type O2 sensor) and a lean-burn NOx catalyst to further reduce the resulting NOx emissions that increase under "lean-burn" conditions and meet NOx emissions requirements.
James P. Womack
James P. Womack was the research director of the "International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP)" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the founder and chairman of the "Lean Enterprise Institute", a nonprofit institution for the dissemination and exploration of the Lean thinking with the aim of his further development of the Lean Enterprise.
Efficiency Movement
Coming into usage in 1990, the Western term Lean manufacturing (lean enterprise, lean production, or simply "Lean") refers to a business idea that considered the expenditure of resources for anything other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Today the Lean concept is broadening to include a greater range of strategic goals, not just cost-cutting and efficiency.
Lean services
Lean Service has its origin in the Toyota Production System (see Lean manufacturing). Lean in the Service sector is subject itself to continuous improvement, and as such there are an increasing number of concepts that may or may not be included as part of Lean Service.
Product testing
As industrialization proliferated various manufacturers began exploring concepts of what is now called lean manufacturing to maximize industrial efficiency. This included a trend to produce goods with certain specifications and according to standards for production. Government agencies in the United States in particular started demanding that manufacturers who bid on government contracts fulfill the work according to predefined standards. Early thinkers, such as Frederick J. Schlink, began to imagine a system for applying similar expectations for standards to consumer needs in order to allow people to make purchases according to product merit rather than rival advertising claims or marketing propaganda. Schlink met Stuart Chase and together they published "Your Money's Worth", which was a national guide to fraud and manipulation of the American marketplace due to lack of consumer representation in the regulation process. At the end of this book, there was a description of a theoretical "consumers' club" which would test products and serve only the interests of consumers.The success of the book led to the founding of Consumers' Research as the world's first consumer organization.[6] This began the consumer movement.
Lean manufacturing
In addition, many of the popular lean initiatives, coming from the TPS, are solutions to specific problems that Toyota was facing. Toyota, having an undesired current condition, determined what the end state would look like. Through much study, the gap was closed, which resulted in many of the tools in place today. Often, when a tool is implemented outside of TPS, a company believes that the solution lay specifically within one of the popular lean initiatives. The tools which were the solution to a specific problem for a specific company may not be able to be applied in exactly the same manner as designed. Thus, the solution does not fit the problem and a temporary solution is created vs. the actual root cause.
Lean manufacturing
The "flow" (or smoothness) based approach aims to achieve JIT, by removing the variation caused by work scheduling and thereby provide a driver, rationale or target and priorities for implementation, using a variety of techniques. The effort to achieve JIT exposes many quality problems that are hidden by buffer stocks; by forcing smooth flow of only value-adding steps, these problems become visible and must be dealt with explicitly.
Lean construction
Lean construction supplements traditional construction management approaches with (Abdelhamid 2007): (1) two critical and necessary dimensions for successful capital project delivery by requiring the deliberate consideration of material and information flow and value generation in a production system; and (2) different project and production management (planning-execution-control) paradigms.
Lean Launchpad
Lean LaunchPad is an entrepreneurship methodology created by Steve Blank to test and develop business models based on querying and learning from customers. It is based on the scientific method and combines experiential learning with the three building blocks of a successful lean startup: Alexander Osterwalder's "Business Model Canvas", Steve Blank's "Customer Development Model, and Agile Engineering.
Lean manufacturing
Lean principles are derived from the Japanese manufacturing industry. The term was first coined by John Krafcik in his 1988 article, "Triumph of the Lean Production System", based on his master's thesis at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Krafcik had been a quality engineer in the Toyota-GM NUMMI joint venture in California before joining MIT for MBA studies. Krafcik's research was continued by the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at MIT, which produced the international best-selling book co-authored by James P. Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos called "The Machine That Changed the World." A complete historical account of the IMVP and how the term "lean" was coined is given by Holweg (2007).
Lean laboratory
A lean laboratory is one which is focused on processes, procedures, and infrastructure that deliver results in the most efficient way in terms of cost, speed, or both. Lean laboratory is a management and organization process derived from the concept of lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (TPS). The goal of a lean laboratory is to reduce resource usage and costs while improving productivity, staff morale, and laboratory-driven outcomes.
Lean manufacturing
The supply chains take changes in deploying second factory or warehouse near their major markets in order to react consumers’ need promptly instead of investing manufacturing factories on the lost-cost countries. For instance, Dell sells computers directly from their website, cutting franchised dealers out of their supply chains. Then, the firm use outsourced partners to produce its components, deliver components to their assembly plants on these main markets around the world, like America and China.
Rapid construction
Rapid construction can be achieved through the basic principle of focusing on eliminating waste. The criteria of stabilizing the work flow can be achieved by injecting lean manufacturing principles into the construction process flow. Lean construction is a new way to manage construction. The objective, principles and techniques of lean construction taken together form the basis for a rapid project delivery process. Unlike current approaches to managing construction (including design-build) and programmatic improvement efforts (partnering), lean construction provides the foundation for an operations based rapid construction project delivery system. While the transformation-flow-value theory broadens the understanding of project management, the perception of construction as a complex phenomenon opens up for the introduction of completely new approaches to project management. The ordered approach which gave rise to what can be called management-as-planning and management-as organizing should be reinterpreted and supplemented in future project management. Management as co-operation and as learning comes into focus. The consultant and contractor’s familiarity with the system led to significant reductions in construction time and improvements in overall economy. The use of material and workflow in this technology is to provide rapid construction, decrease environmental impacts, increase durability, and reduce on-site labour, resulting in better work zone safety.
Lean product development
The purpose of production is to manufacture products reliably within margins of control. The flow of value is physically evident, and the link between cause and effect is easy to see. For example, feedback on adjusting the speed of production is immediately realized in an increase or decrease in rejected items. Any decisions made must be based on best practice.
Design for lean manufacturing
Not to be confused with "Lean Design" (copyrighted and patented by Munro & Associates, of Michigan), design for lean manufacturing builds on the set of principles that emerged from design for the customer value and design for manufacturability. Since some lean tools are used in the practice of design for lean manufacturing, it borrows the first word in its name from lean manufacturing as exemplified by the Toyota Production System. Design for lean manufacturing was first coined by Womack, Jones, and Roos after studying the differences between conventional development at American automotive companies and lean methods at Japanese automobile producers. While lean manufacturing focuses on optimization of the production stream and removal of wastes (commonly referred to as muda, mura, and muri) once the value stream has been created, Lean Design ® (Munro & Associates)concerns itself with methods and techniques to create a lean solution from the start, resulting in more value and fewer wastes across the value stream. Lean design ® seeks to optimize the development process through rapid learning cycles to build and test multiple concepts early. Managing the knowledge value stream, systematic problem solving with analysis of the trade-offs between various design options, and solutions generated from ideas filtered by systematic innovation methods are viewed as methods within the lean design process.
Lean startup
Lean manufacturing was later applied to software as lean software development.
Lean enterprise
New innovations in lean enterprise moved away from electronic manufacturing to internet and software technology. Before, during, and after the dot-com bubble, internet and software enterprises originally did not place emphasis on lean enterprise principles for efficient usage and allocation of capital and labor due to accessible funds from venture capital and capital markets. The idea of "build it and they will come" became common practice as a result.
Lean manufacturing
In 1999, Spear and Bowen identified four rules which characterize the "Toyota DNA":Most of the basic goals of lean manufacturing and waste reduction were derived from Benjamin Franklin through documented examples. "Poor Richard's Almanack" says of wasted time, "He that idly loses 5s. worth of time, loses 5s., and might as prudently throw 5s. into the river." He added that avoiding unnecessary costs could be more profitable than increasing sales: "A penny saved is two pence clear. A pin a-day is a groat a-year. Save and have."
Lean product development
Lean product development (LPD) is a lean approach to counter the challenges of product development, notably:Toyota started its journey with lean product development at Toyota Loom Works (see History of Toyota). Their early approach is notably different from the lean manufacturing that became famous through the book "The Machine that changed the world".
No value added
No Value Added (NVA) is a management term loosely related to the Lean Manufacturing movement as codified in the 1980s by a landmark MIT study of the automobile industry, which explained lean production for the first time.
Lean thinking
Lean has repeatedly been accused of being a form of turbo-charged Taylorism, the harbinger of productivity pressure, detrimental to employee's health and autonomy at work. Unfortunately, some company programs calling themselves “lean” have indeed had a severely negative effect on the business and work relations. This problem arises when senior leaders do not seek to adopt lean thinking but instead delegate to outside consultants or internal specialist team the job of “leaning” processes. Lean thinking very clearly states that it seeks cost reductions – finding the policy origins of unnecessary costs and eliminating at the cause – and not cost cutting – forcing people to work within reduced budgets and degraded conditions in order to achieve line by line cost advantage. There is no doubt about this, but to many managers the latter option is far more expedient than the former and it's easy to call “lean” a cost cutting program. Nonetheless, this is not that, and any approach that doesn't have the explicit aim to develop lean thinking in every employee should not be considered to be “lean.”
Lean Six Sigma
Lean six sigma organizes lean and six sigma to cut production costs, improve quality, speed up, stay competitive, and save money. From six sigma they gain the reduced variation on parts. Also, lean focuses on saving money for the company by focusing on the types of waste and how to reduce the waste. The two coming into lean six sigma to better each other creating a well balanced and organized solution to save money and produce better parts consistently.
Activity-based costing
Lean accounting is primarily used within lean manufacturing. The approach has proven useful in many service industry areas including healthcare, construction, financial services, governments, and other industries.
Lean construction
If the tool, method, and/or technique will assist in fulfilling the aims of lean construction, it is considered a part of the toolkit available for use. A sampling of these tools includes: BIM (Lean Design), A3, process design (Lean Design), offsite fabrication and JIT (Lean Supply), value chain mapping (Lean Assembly), visual site (Lean Assembly); 5S (Lean Assembly), daily crew huddles (Lean Assembly).