Lean

Lean is both a philosophy and a discipline which, at its core, increases access to information to ensure responsible decision making in the service of creating customer value. (Jim Benson)

Lean is a mindset that aims to make smarter decisions about how to invest resources (such as time, energy, and money) to eliminate waste and to consume less. That’s made by promoting the total commitment of team members as problem solvers, while putting customer satisfaction as the main target. Therefore, adding customer-defined value to products and services, which improves the overall business performance.

There’s nothing so useless as doing something efficiently that should not be done at all. (Peter Drucker, known as the “Management Guru”)

Lean was mainly developed by Taiichi Ohno, it was first an approach (among many others) for the Toyota Production System (TPS) before its modern conception of a business method to be applied in almost any industry.

The Pillars of Lean

Respect for People

Go see, ask why, show respect. (Fujio Cho, Toyota Motor Corporation)

The best ideas come from the people with their hands on the product, that’s why it’s so important to listen to them and value their opinion. Ensure that: any kind of problem to be eliminated; or any possibility to improve, will be identified and used as an opportunity to optimize the process of production by encouraging team members to proactively share their insights and ideas.

Continuous Improvement

It is to believe that there is always a way to improve. Continuous improvement is the actual mindset of Lean, which is adopted from Kaizen. It’s a daily activity triggered by everyone that drives team members to foster a learning mindset to identify all value-adding opportunities for the customer. Often, improvement cycles such as Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) or Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) are used to efficiently organize, measure, and report on Lean activities.

The Lean Principles

Value

We need to research our customer’s business to identify what’s valuable and have a good understanding of what the customer is willing to pay for. No one knows better their business needs, that’s why value is always defined by the customer.

Value can be categorized in three ways:

Non-value add activity (which is waste).
Value add activity.
Business values add activity.

Example questions to identify value:

What are the customer’s requirements?
When and why do they need them to be met?
How can our product fulfill their requirements?
When and how will we be able to deliver the product they require?

The Value Stream

It’s the result of the Value Stream Mapping, the step-by-step definition of the process in which we need to identify each activity and actor involved to get to the final product. That mapping allows us to see how much value each stage contributes to the result. Therefore, the value stream indicates which steps do not add enough value and should be removed, or at least optimized.

Flow

The flow refers to the value stream workflow. Once we have mapped the value stream, we need to ensure the whole process runs smoothly, without any delay or interruption, aiming to enhance its efficiency. Almost every process of production is likely to require cross-functional teamwork. Lean seeks to have every process in sync with every other.

Questions that can help us optimize and keep the flow:

What are the necessary tools for each step of the process?
Is every tool necessary at every point in the process?
Can we minimize the time delay between two steps?
How can we reduce the number of steps required to deliver?

Pull

It is to produce only what we need when it’s needed, instead of producing (and storing) a lot of materials and products to be (hopefully) used in the future, which may result in waste. It’s meant to improve the productivity and efficiency of the processes, it contributes directly with the objective of consuming less. The concept was an industry-changing approach created by Toyota.

Perfection

The relentless pursuit of perfection is not only a pillar of Lean, it’s also a principle. We need to be aware that (new) problems can occur at any time. The Lean mindset suggests that it’s not enough to just improve things, but we should be always looking for new ways of improving them by applying rigorous measurements and analyzing results during the entire process.

The Seven Wastes

It’s critical to eliminate waste or muda (無駄) in order to succeed, that’s why Taiichi Ohno, which is also considered the father of the Toyota Production System, Kanban, and Just-in-Time (applied at a systematic, large scale), developed the Seven Wastes model.

The Seven Wastes are:

Delay, waiting or time spent in a queue with no value being added.
Overproduction, doing more than we actually need.
Over processing or undertaking non-value added activity.
Transportation between plants or even around the globe.
Movement of stuff by machines or people.
Inventory, an unwanted pile or accumulation of resources or products.
Defects in the product, which means it’s an undesired product.

Reference: