Lean History

Lean history is not, the world was created then it ended, history with all of the fat taken out.. I am talking about the history of lean manufacturing, the thing I spoke about in my last post.

If you don't remember lean is that thing that gets you to concentrate on the customer's value and make it flow like a little stream through your factory, whilst chopping out all of the waste to make things truly efficient.. I guess this means that instead of your stream slowly meandering through your factory it will rush through delivering your product straight out the other side without delay..

The ideas behind lean are not new, some of the principles of lean such as interchangeable parts date back to manufacturing muskets and production lines were used by the British Royal Navy to build pulleys and boats (or are they ships?)

Lean began to really move at the beginning of the last century when Ford built his production line to build the model T. Along with people like Taylor and some fellow called Gilbreth who was the inspiration behind cheaper by the dozen, all sorts of ideas began to circulate about measuring peoples efficiency and looking at the motion within their work, people were rapidly being turned into robots to repeat the same work over and over again as quickly as possible..

World war 2 arrived and Ford and some small aircraft manufacturer Boeing were trying to produce bombers the way they made cars, trying to manufacture one every hour..

After world war 2 things began to really change, the US decided to export all of it's crackpot business and quality gurus to Japan to help with building their economy there as it had had a slight set back..

Toyota, looking at what Ford had already done realised that they had to use not just Ford's principles but the ideas of Juran, Deming and all of the others that we sent there, added to their own observations about inventory being the biggest waste they began to develop the Toyota Production System..

Not long after the west began to notice that they were not making cheap plastic toys anymore but they were actually begging to dominate the automotive and other markets, people began to try to discover why, going off to visit and bring back ideas.

Lean was born in 1990 with the publication of "the machine that changed the world" a book that showed how Toyota had become the most efficient car producer.

Lean manufacturing finally arrived in the west and we have been trying to implement it ever since, the trouble is too many business owners think that they don't need lean or any other Japanese inspired fad so they ignore these ideas.. and thus they begin to slip behind.. further and further behind..

It is useful to understand the history if you want to implement it, history of lean manufacturing is a useful place to look..

QG.

Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is a very broad term, lots of people have very different definitions as to what lean manufacturing is and what its main aims are. I will tell you my favorite one shortly.

Lean is about creating flow and reducing waste - oh and looking after the customer. Basically whatever you do, whatever you improve it should be something that the Customer actually wants.

Lean manufacturing is about defining value, i don't mean getting the accountant in to tell you how much your stock is worth, I mean what value as in what does the customer really want. The things that they want, quick delivery, a new product every 3 months, products in six different colour and one with fake fur. The features and the services that they want from you, if you can be better at giving them what they really want than your competitors are then you will be the one to get the business, oh unless you competitor makes it cheaper then the customer might compromise.. so lean is also about making things as economically as possible, wiping out all of the waste in your system if you can..

So lean is about the customer, lean is about efficiency and it is about cutting out waste.. It is also about flow, the stuff I am reading about this says that flow is what cuts out all of the waste and makes you efficient. Your value (the stuff the customer wants - nothing else or it is not value) should flow all the way from your raw materials (apples and sugar) to your customer (a quickly delivered still warm candy apple).

This value should not be piled up in a warehouse somewhere as stock or sat in the middle of a factory somewhere else for weeks on end waiting for the next machine to do its job. Your value should jump from process to process without any delays being made when the customer wants it, not sat on the shelf waiting just in case the customer might want it - would you accept a beer sat on the bar or want it poured when you got there?

So lean is about flow, value, the customer, efficiency and waste reduction or elimination.. I think I have it all, if not check out this web page for a cool definition of what is lean manufacturing.

Business Improvement Pages

I am finding in my quest to improve my own business that I am spending a huge amount of time surfing the Internet to find many business improvement pages on different tools and ideas regarding things such as lean manufacturing, six sigma and TQM and a host of other tools that will help me develop and improve my business.

In my mind it would be handy to have one place to go to find information on all of these ideas and techniques so I have decided to keep this blog going to point people in the direction of what I consider to be the right tools and techniques and where to find additional information on the net.

I am not a great writer, so please excuse my style and the fact that a lot of what I will do on here is to point you in the direction of what I consider to be the better business improvement pages out there on the internet.

I am new to all of this so i guess this blog will develop over time and I hope improve!

Business improvement is a must, you have to continually improve everything that you do otherwise you will soon be left behind by your competition. It does not matter what industry you are in, whether it is manufacturing or service based, you have to improve. Failure to improve will leave you with dwindling profits and eventually no business and a huge debt!

Improving your business will give you an advantage over your competitors, whatever you do within your business at some point will impact on your customers. Improving the productivity of your workforce could help you to reduce costs, improving the efficiency of your office staff could mean a quicker service and so on.

Whatever business you are in I am sure that there is some aspect that you wish to improve, whatever it is I am sure that you can either just get on and do it or find some specific business improvement tool out there that can help you..

I hope over coming posts to show the various tools available, what they are and point you in the direction of where you can get more information.

Regards.
QG
History of lean manufacturing