What is Lean?

Lean is eliminating wasteful process steps and increasing the

speed with minimum capital.
If we can reduce the process time, we will be able to bring out
the product as and when the customer needs it.

Global Competition
Become more demanding
Best quality products
Immediate supply
Continuous reduction in price

What does the Customer want?

On time delivery
Good quality
Low price

What is Change?
Sales forecast
Product design/development
Procurement of materials
Inventory management
Production
Quality management

What is Lean and Lean manufacturing

The term lean in the manufacturing context implies identification of
waste in all the processes involved.
Lean manufacture is a business philosophy that continuously
improves all the processes involved in a manufacturing environment,
irrespective of what types of products are being manufactured.
Lean manufacturing means increasing speed by reducing the
process time.
It results in reduction of cost and faster action.
It can be related to automobile, aerospace, chemical engineering, or
any other type of manufacturing.

What is Lean and Lean manufacturing

Lean manufacture has a comprehensive set of elements, rules
and tools that focus on the elimination of waste and the creation
of value.
Lean manufacture also means speedy smooth and economical
manufacture.

What is Waste
Waste is anything that consumes resources and does not add value to the
customer. Globally, industries have identified the following forms of wastes:

High inventory
Scrap
Rework
Repair
Low productivity
Downtime
Poor yield
Cycle time inconsistency
Unutilized machinery and equipment
Overtime
Long lead time
Delay
Waiting for inspection
Excess labour

Wasted to be eliminated in Lean

Manufacturing paradigm

Overproduction
Overproduction refers to the situation of producing more quantity than
that is actually required by the customers.
It occurs in organisations due to many reasons like mistakes in
forecasting, compulsion to exploit the full service of permanently
employed employees
Unnecessary Inventory

Inventory may be necessary only when high uncertainties like

interrupted supplies, irregular workforce, rarely available facilities and
fluctuating prices of the raw materials are encountered.
This unnecessary inventory may be maintained in organisations due to
many reasons like incapable processes leading to the rejection of
products, adoption of inappropriate forecasting techniques, and
insufficiently trained workforce.

Delay
Any delay in the processing of activities causes damages to the
planning activities of the organization.

In the organization, delays are prone to occur in several areas such as

production, marketing, administration and design.
Any delay in the beginning of a process gets transferred to their
subsequent stages affecting their smooth execution. In order to avoid
such delays, a realistic schedule is to be prepared.
Transportation
Material handling is characterized by the physical movement of
materials.
This causes the organizations to spend considerable amount of time
and money on transportation.

Processing
All production and service oriented activities require to be processed
to get the value added output.
Though processing appears to be a value-adding activity, there are
many circumstances in which elongated processes lead to the
wastage of money and time.
Unnecessary Motion
In an organization wherein the layout is not properly designed,
people are forced to move more distances through haphazard
pathways.
In industrial engineering field, the method of optimising the motion of
people has been largely addressed under the area called method
study.

Defective Parts
Hence, the production costs of the defective items were being
transferred to the price of the non-defective items.
However, engineers have been establishing the fact that zero-defect
manufacturing is possible by incorporating fool proof technological
devices.

Underutilization of people
One of the challenges of imparting leanness is the overcoming of
disparities of the characteristics and capabilities of the people who are
employed to achieve the goals of the organizations as well as customer
satisfaction.
In organizations, people with varied educational backgrounds and work
experiences are employed.

The challenge of the manner and engineer is to allocate right jobs, right
responsibilities and right authorities to these different kinds of people
employed to attain the goals of the organization and to achieve
customer satisfaction.

Top Seven Wastes

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Mistakes that require rectification

Production of inventory that no one wants
Processing steps that are not needed
Unnecessary transport of material and subassemblies
Unnecessary movement of employees involved in the
production process
6. People waiting in the downstream process for the completion
of upstream work
7. Producing goods or services which do not meet the specific
needs of customers.

Mistakes that require rectification

Consumes more time
Affects the output
Consumes capacity
Reasons for rework can be identified and eliminated easily
Rework consumes resources which will not be paid by the
customer
Solution
Eliminating rework is an ideal solution which increases the
profitability of the organization

Production of inventory that no one wants

Bullwhip effect in forecasting customer requirement and
subsequent effect on supply chain
Bullwhip effect is safety stock over safety stock
Results in losses, obsolesce and high interest/storage costs.
Solution
Produce what the customer needs in shortest possible time and
serve him

Processing steps that are not needed

Steps that do not add any value to the customer
Purchasing procedures and approvals
Inspection in some cases unnecessary but mandatory as
customer pays for it to meet certain regulations

Solution
Eliminate the unnecessary process steps

Unnecessary transport of material and

sub assemblies
Facilities (raw materials, tools, gauges, testing tools) are kept at
different places which are far from each other
Facilities not planned well
Materials kept at high locations
Solution
While designing layouts maximum care should be taken to avoid
unnecessary movement of materials

Unnecessary movement by employees

active in the production process
Time is wasted in searching, reaching tools, stackling
assemblies, etc.
Facilities not organized in a proper manner
Do not add value to customer
Essential facilities such as first aid, restrooms, and drinking
water must be placed close to the workplace to eliminate
unnecessary movement of employees

Groups of people in downstream

processes waiting for the completion of
upstream work
Employees have to wait for instructions, materials, tools,
machine availability etc.
Slows down the process
Builds up work in progress inventory
Solution
Process steps should be examined and process steps that cause
waiting can be avoided

Producing goods or services which do

not meet the specific needs of customers
Products that fail to meet specifications result in rework/scarp
Insufficient market knowledge
Long product development cycle
Lack of knowledge on customer requirement and competitor's
products
Solution
Creating a proper coordination between development agencies
and market agencies