What happens after you implement lean manufacturing? How do you recalibrate it?

You've probably heard all of the buzz about lean manufacturing, but do you know how to implement it and what happens after you implement it? How do you recalibrate lean manufacturing in order to keep it working correctly and to make sure it's making a positive impact on your company? This article will help you understand what comes next after lean manufacturing has been implemented.

When lean manufacturing is implemented in the right manner, it can be a wonderful experience for your company. However when lean manufacturing isn't implemented correctly, it can lead to a number of problems. Hiring a lean manufacturing firm to help you with the implementation is a great way to make sure it's done correctly. They will be able to help you increase efficiency, reduce waste, and improve employee morale. What happens if you don't hire a lean manufacturing form and you don't implement it right? You often have a number of problems like late delivered, backed-up products, quality control problems, and unhappy customers.

If you have implemented lean manufacturing and it's not working, your next job is to try using Lean Six Sigma. This is a great way to focus on the reduction of waste and to improve efficiency of your overall company.

Part of learning why lean manufacturing may not be working comes down to analyzing your company and to see where things are going wrong. Are the problems coming with the products or is it with the organization of the company and of the system? If the products are being generated and sent out to your customers without complaints on the quality, the problem is most likely related to human error. This usually leaves you with bottlenecking and other common manufacturing problems that lead to slow delivery of your products.

To understand if you are implementing lean manufacturing correctly starts with the basic purpose of lean manufacturing and if you actually understand how it started. Many people believe that lean manufacturing started with Toyota as they have widely published information about their Toyota Production System and the use of lean manufacturing.While Toyota deserves a lot of credit pertaining to lean manufacturing, it actually started with Henry Ford. He started many of the lean manufacturing principles that are still in use today, but it was Toyota that refined them and turned them into the popular tools they are today in the manufacturing industry. Going back to the basics of lean manufacturing can help you to understand where you need to retool your process in order to have it become a success.

Kanban is one of the common tools that is used in the lean manufacturing process. If you aren't taking the time to setup kanban correctly, it is usually likely that your lean manufacturing process will fail. Kanban is a great way to reduce waste within the company. It is part of just-in-time manufacturing and will be able to help you with your overall lean manufacturing goals.

To identify where the problems are, you will need to start by talking to your employees. You need to find out what is wrong with the machines or the organizational structure altogether. Listening to your employees is the best way in which you can focus on retooling lean manufacturing. Their ideas can help you come up with a different implementation process to your lean manufacturing system, which will be able to help you save money and reduce waste.

Set up measurements for the company as well. You need to measure the productivity of the company along with your product quality. This is a big part of successful lean implementation.