The Principles Of Lean Manufacturing - 1075 Words

The primary use of lean principles was in the manufacturing domain earlier, later it spread to various processes across various industries. It was believe that the idea of lean originated in japan (Toyota), but there is evidence that the Mr. Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company has been using the principles of lean in the early 1920’s. Henry ford thought that shortening the time a product takes in a production is a key solution to reduce the overall cost of the product [4]. If a product spends large amounts of time in a process of manufacturing, the overall costs goes high, one of the reasons being more material handling. There are primarily 5 principles of lean manufacturing [9]. Those 5 principles are as follows: 1) Specifying†¦show more content†¦Most people tend to misunderstand lean by identifying the non-value added processes and working on them to eradicate them which in turn increases the amount of non-value added tasks. VALUE STREAMS: Value stream is a map of processes in the order of which they run. Creating a value stream is of key importance in understanding the value added and non-value added processes. Value streams help us identify the whole production process as a whole while giving us insight on all the sub processes that go through. Value stream processes may also depict the flow of information. VSM requires various departments to come together and prepare the map, it is not an individual job. FLOW: We continuously try to establish a flow between values added processes. A value added process must not be hindered by a process which of no value. If possible, non-value added processes must be done in parallel. PULL: lean concentrates on pull system. Pull system is making the product when it is required. This tends to minimize the wastage and also has minimal inventory. Employees stay idle when there is no order but the value is from the final product. Industries following push system can face a few problems in the form of over production and inventory wastages. Producing first and storing it in warehouse eats up the capital that is invested and is a considerable waste. PERFECTION: Perfection is achieved when the