History of Lean
During II
world war, the economic condition of Japan was heavily destroyed. Due to this
there was scarcity of fund resulting in limiting access to corporate finance.
In this situation, neither Toyota was able to set up a mass production system
like their American counterparts, nor it was possible to layoff the employees
to reduce their cost due to legislation. Anyhow Toyota had to devise a new
system for reducing costs to sustain in the market. So they decided to produce
a small batch of products which would reduce inventories; it means they would
need less capital to produce the same product. But this is obstructed by the
practical difficulty of changing tools and production lines frequently. To cope
with this problem they started making multipurpose tooling systems in their
machines and trained their employees in changeover time reduction methods. At
the same time, Toyota realized that investing in people is more important than
investing in bigger size machinery and continues employee training throughout
the organization. This motivates all employees and they are more open to the
improvement process and everyone started giving their input to the company.
In this
way, short production runs started by Toyota became a benefit rather than a
burden, as it was able to respond much more rapidly to changes in demand by
quickly switching production from one model to another (Drew, Blair and Stefan,
2004, p. 5-6). Toyota didn’t depend on the economies of scale production like
American companies. It rather developed a culture, organization and operating
system that relentlessly pursued the elimination of waste, variability and
inflexibility. To achieve this, it focused its operating system on responding
to demand and nothing else. This in turn means it has to be flexible; when
there are changes in demand, the operating system is a stable workforce that is
required to be much more skilled and much more flexible than those in most mass
production systems. Over time, all these elements were consolidated into a new
approach to operations that formed the basis of lean or Toyota Production
System.
Definition of Lean
The popular
definition of Lean
Manufacturing and the
Toyota Production System
usually consists of the
following
1.
It is a comprehensive set of techniques which when
combined allows you to reduce and eliminate the wastes. This will make the
company leaner, more flexible and more responsive by reducing waste.
2.
Lean is the systematic approach to identifying and
eliminating waste through continuous improvement by flowing the product or
service at the pull of your customer in pursuit of perfection
According to the lean operating
system consists of the following:
·
A lean operating system follows certain principles
to deliver value to the customer while minimizing all forms of loss.
·
Each value stream within the operating system must
be optimized individually from end to end.
·
Lean tools and techniques are applied selectively
to eliminate the three sources of loss: waste, variability and inflexibility.
Thus the organization who wants to implement lean
should have strong customer focus, should be willing to remove wastes from the
processes they operate on daily basis and should have the motivation of growth
and survival.
Lean
Principles
The major five principles
of Lean are as follows
Principle 1: Accurately specify value
from customer perspective for both products and services.
Principle 2: Identify
the value stream for products and services and remove non-value-adding waste
along the value stream.
Principle 3: Make the product and
services flow without interruption across the value stream.
Principle 4: Authorize production of
products and services based on the pull by the customer.
Principle 5: Strive for perfection by
constantly removing layers of waste.
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