From Guest Blogger James Paulsen: Lean Manufacturing and Sustainability — An Approach All Companies Must Apply

Lean manufacturing, an important component to sustainability, has been applied by many companies since then and even the successful Toyota auto production is a product of this. Lean manufacturing makes use of an effective system that was developed years agoin the United States – the Training Withinthe Industry system (TWI). This training deals with how the supervisor must act in terms of training its workers to achieve consistent results. The system is now being transferred and communicated all throughout the world via Lean manufacturing.

The Seven Categories of Waste

Waste in a manufacturing company can be categorized into seven.

Transporting Products – from the storage or any distance that needs to be used in the production process
Motion – too many actions done by production people, wherein fact, they can merge it down into fewer actions
Delay – waiting for something that is needed before the production process can be completed
Overproduction – too many products were manufactured and it exceeds the number of orders required
Over processing – processing more products specializedwith a customer
Defects – mistakes found on the production planning and production design

Who Can Make the Lean Manufacturing Possible?

There are other manufacturing principles aside from lean manufacturing and they all consider different individuals to be the sole expert on the principles. In lean manufacturing, the experts are the people in production. They knew what the customers want to buy and they also know what problems arise in the production instead of the making the managers and supervisors the experts.

However, the support of the top management must not also be disregarded. Without support, lean manufacturing will eventually fail. A top leader must be assigned to guide the change of principles.

Hiring a Lean Manufacturing Consultant

Implementing lean manufacturing on your company entails a very tight process for which waste must be eliminated. But if you are too busy fixing other problems with your company, there might be some aspects, which you may missto examine. Therefore, hiring a lean manufacturing consultant would be the best thing to do.

The lean manufacturing consultant will act as your adviser and he is playing a very big role in your company. He can be the root for the success of your company. Hence, choosing the best consultant is essential to your business. There are ways to find who the best consultant is, and here are some of the basic factors that you need to consider.

The consultant must not be novice in terms of the things done in the production process as well as the strategies that must be implemented.
The consultant must have a thorough understanding about the different lean techniques.
The consultant must be able to decide how to modify systems and processes. He must know how the customers can be satisfied with the products.
The consultant must be a lean professional and must have passed the board exam. He must have past experiences already and has handled different industries including the industry you are in.

The lean consultant is a great asset of a company, but this does not mean that he should only talk to the higher officials. He must also be able to talk to other employees of different levels. This is the best method of imparting lean in the company. The consultants have the capacity to press out the skills and talents of the employees so that they can be more productive.

The Advantages of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing provides a company several benefits and those are enumerated below.

Eliminate Waste

A company that has applied lean manufacturingis opened up to the possibility of significantly reducing the unproductive tasks, the unnecessary activities, and behavior in the vicinity where the production is done. It is just basically a principle that lets you develop a process, technique, strategy, and initiative, just to achieve those reductions of wastes.

Boost Up the Company

Aside from lowering down the operational costs at a very substantial level, lean manufacturing is also effective in restoring and boosting up the competitive level of the company. This is because of the fact that companies are also experiencing serious problems in other fields aside from the production process.

Increase Earnings

The techniques followed in lean manufacturing reduce the lead time. When it happens, operational costs are also lessening down including the labor’s time. This will then result in bigger savings since the earnings alsoincrease.

Possible Reasons of Failure

When you fail to see improvements in your company after years of implementing lean manufacturing, some things might not be right. This means you have not been successful in implementing it. Here are some of the factors that might possibly result only to failure.

Failure to hire the most competent expert or the one hired is not really an expert. This can easily be fixed though.
The people inside your company are not cooperating.
The time frame you set to see noticeable changes is set too short. This is not totally a problem. You just have to set a clearer mindset, which is apparently a more reasonable time frame for the system to really work.
The company is not devoted to following the lean principles.
The situation of the business is too critical and repair can no longer do anything.
The people in the company think of too many negative things. Everybody must be open to the opportunity of success rather than failure since doing otherwise will lower their motivation.
The performance measures are taken wrongfully. The exact performance measures must be known before starting lean manufacturing since it will be a very big basis in the supposed changes.

A business can have a good start, but still end up losing. This is because they stopped aiming for the best. If you want to help up your business achieve success, there must be a changed in the usual things done in the company. This will motivate the employees to work hardmore. Lean manufacturing is a way on how can this be achieved since in lean, continuous development is communicated to everybody and this should be everyone’s aim.

James continues to progress his passion for writing and his enthusiasm for getting a job well done, here he writes about Lean Manufacturing and Companies Must Apply