The diversity of Lean Production

Lean Production originated in Japan. It is an approach to production management that focuses on cutting out waste and making systems efficient all whilst ensuring quality is not compromised. It is a methodology that has seen huge success in manufacturing, see below for Toyota as an example, and is now being used across the board.

Traditional Lean Production

As mentioned above Toyota is a great example for us here. They really developed the concept of Lean Production and moved it forward. Eiji Toyoda developed a system called the Socio-Technical System for his car manufacturing company which was of course Toyota.

He looked to people such as Henry Ford, who invented the assembly line and made a fortune with it, for inspiration. The system seeks to eliminate all waste within the manufacturing system. Waste such as operator errors, overproduction and motion issues. Toyota used this system to great success.

Basic principles of Lean Production

The long term philosophy is “Base your management decisions on long term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals”. It is a hands on process and another popular mantra within it is “Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation” and “become a learning organisation through relentless reflection”.

- Use only reliable and tested technology that no only serves your purpose but your people too.

- Level out the workload. Work like the tortoise!

- Build a culture of stopping to fix problems so as to ensure excellent quality from the outset.

- Use visual control so that all problems are discovered and not hidden.

- Grow leaders who thoroughly understand their work and are able to implement and teach the philosophy.

- Respect all the people involved in your business from your staff to your suppliers and customers.

- Make decisions slowly by consensus. Consider every option.

Lean production is essential about problem solving. Many people get stuck in doing the same thing the same way with substandard results. You know what one definition of insanity is? To do the same thing over and over again and expect it to produce different results. Staff are encouraged to give feedback and suggestions as to how they think processes could be improved.

Widespread application

Hopefully you can see from this that Lean Production can be applied to many areas and industries. Call centres, the public sector and educational facilities are taking up these principles. If all business seek to listen to their staff, give them reasonable workloads and encourage their feedback it would be a very good thing.

For more information see Lean Production