Lean Production. How to improve operations by eliminating waste
Lean production is synonymous with speed, reduction of waste, reduction of activities.
The term Lean Production, literally 'lean production', bases its philosophy on the Toyota production system.
The concept of industrial innovation is not only rooted in product innovation, but also encompasses production processes with a focus on critical assets in the manufacturing system.
Applying this philosophy can help companies achieve greater flexibility, reduce costs and increase their competitive advantage over their competitors. But, to implement it, one must first make a deep analysis of internal processes to unambiguously define which activities are necessary and which are not. You have to be clear on 'who does what', identify the structure to understand if and what can be streamlined.
The Lean Production philosophy: eliminate waste
With this in mind, the Lean Production philosophy aims to reorganise production, through a set of techniques and strategies, to minimise waste - of materials and time - to the point of eliminating it and increasing the value perceived by the customer.
All business processes include value-added activities and non-value-added activities, i.e. waste:
- Overproduction of goods
- Stopped raw materials and semi-finished products
- Unnecessary material movements that do not correspond to a real need or value
- Unnecessarily accumulated stocks
- Execution of unnecessary activities
- Movement of people
- Production defects that force rework of products
To achieve lean production goals, it is important to start with careful planning and understand which internal processes need to be improved and which ones need to be eliminated.
However, cutting parts of business processes indiscriminately can be very counterproductive. Lean production does not necessarily mean a 'short' organisation. Eliminating processes or intermediate positions does not always mean optimisation, because sometimes this leads to the loss of control over activities or activities that are crucial to successful performance.
Following the methods implemented by Toyota, we can summarise them as follows:
- Decrease setup times as much as possible.
- Production in small batches, no inventories.
- Involvement of personnel, no watertight compartments.
- Quality control from the very first steps of production.
- Implementation of proactive maintenance.
- Pull production and abandonment of push logic.
- Active involvement of material suppliers.
On the one hand, there is the need to improve interaction between all those involved, from staff to suppliers. On the other hand, the need to change perspective, abandoning the push logic to manage production from a pull perspective, i.e. to carry out an activity only when the downstream process requires it.
Lean production and lean organisation
There are therefore many reasons for the success of lean production: reduction of waste, the possibility of reconciling product standardisation and the need for flexibility, the definition of structured and consolidated procedures for production.
The advantages produced by lean production manifest themselves not only externally in terms of better quality perceived by the customer, but also internally within the company through an improvement in the organisational level of departments and the supply chain, human resources and production times.
Success factors in organisations can be summarised as:
- Capacity for technological change
- Speed of response to change
- Human resources as key points of the system
- Constant training to ensure the ability to generate innovation
The concept of lean production inevitably ties in with the success of a business that aims for efficiency and the elimination of everything that is not needed.
Lean organisation, after all, refers precisely to this, to the ability to optimise what is needed.
