The 8 basics of lean manufacturing

If you want to implement lean manufacturing you will need to find the most important principles of the lean system. Described bellow are 8 of the most important basic principles of lean manufacturing:

1. Eliminate waste. The most basic idea of lean manufacturing is to locate eliminate waste in any form that you find. Seek out problem areas and plan to improve efficiency. If you find anything in your business that does not produce value you need to change it or cut it out.
2. Ask yourself if all parts of a manufacturing process contribute to the creation of the production of value for the customer. Value is always defined by the customer and their expectations.
3. Prioritize the various elements of your plan. Lean manufacturing requires that you pick important projects and focus on them. Look at the most important wasteful processes and change them first.
4. Organize your workplace so that time is not wasted in searching for things. The key to lean manufacturing is careful organization and efficiency.
5. Clean up your workplace so that nothing is in the way. All work spaces and manufacturing spaces need to be clean and well organized. Dirtiness or poor organization leads to waste and danger.
6. Sustain your operations through good management. Management is critical to lean manufacturing. Choose managers who are willing to constantly look for things to improve. People who are unwilling to make changes are no good for lean manufacturing.
7. Standardize your operations so that everyone is thinking on the same level. Different measurement systems or machinery will lead to serious problems.
8. Transform multiple tasks into a single production line. Traditional manufacturing often works according to particular stations through which many products are passing at once. In lean manufacturing you want to pass one product through the line so that quality control is at a maximum.

By implementing these basic principles, you can cut down on the time wasted in waiting for the arrival or the availability of different tools and machines, the time wasted in moving equipment around.You can also cut down on time and people wasted on taking care of avoidable processes, like taking care of problems with your inventory, taking care of queue problems, moving people around, or the problems caused by a poor use of space.
There are a number of different important benefits that come from implementing a lean manufacturing strategy.For example, you can obviously reduce costs by streamlining and no longer wasting money on unnecessary processes.You reduce the time of the product cycle.You can also reduce inventory that is taking up space.Furthermore, you can both increase your capacity for production and reduce the amount of work that is in process.And if that's not enough, you can improve productivity, efficiency, and quality.And who wouldn't want that?
The numbers also show that lean manufacturing pays off.The Manufacturing Performance Institute performed an annual survey with Industry Week.This survey demonstrated that a manufacturing plant's return on invested capital, or ROIC, will increase with the implementation of lean manufacturing.Plants with lean manufacturing measures have a median ROIC of 17%, in contrast to the median ROIC of 10% of plants that don't use ROIC.This is true for both large manufacturers and small manufacturers. So, as you can see, lean manufacturing can lead to much greater efficiency and profits.