Operational Excellence
If you are facing problems arising in production such as waste, slow progress, reduced productivity, … then the reason is probably because you do not know Lean Manufacturing Method. This is considered a “panacea” for factories, is a systematic approach to eliminate waste and maximize value for customers.
Production management is complicated because there are many influencing factors such as people, machines, materials … So we need a way to manage production effectively. In the flow of world industry, people have created Lean Manufacturing Methods to solve production problems.
So, how has Lean Manufacturing’s method evolved from the very beginning? What is the way to apply this elixir to your business? This is a fairly long article, but Duc thinks that is useful for any managers who wants to eliminate waste and optimize the value he creates!
The History of Lean Manufacturing – From Japan
Lean Manufacturing originates from Toyota (Japan) production system with the purpose of eliminating production waste without reducing productivity. Thereby, they help improve the competitive advantage for factories / manufacturing enterprises.
Previously we produced it manually, one person would do all the stages from start to finish. When done manually, a high level of skill is required, resulting in low output / performance. Today, when the industrial revolution broke out, mass production plants were born. More advanced machines gradually replace people, the operating system is gradually automated, but the connection with the human processes is still much leading to wasteful generation.
After World War II, Japan was defeated and the country was in difficulty. At that time, Toyota switched from producing looms to producing trucks to serve production and business. They encountered major problems during the production process:
1. The company is small, thin capital, so it cannot run mass production method with large investment capital and has a lot of raw materials, semi-finished products, slow capital turnover.
2. The Japanese domestic market after the war was small. However, demand varies from small trucks carrying agricultural products, large trucks for industry, small family cars to fit small streets and high gas prices, luxury cars for people with money.
3. At that time, there were many car companies in the world market that became a sight of the Japanese domestic car market.
In this context, Lean Manufacturing or Toyota production method was born:
– Standard parts are common to different products, which reduces the cost of purchasing raw materials
– Continuous and balanced assembly line helps increase productivity
– How to manage inventories and semi-finished products (Work In Process) based on supermarket system with a small amount of inventory but still enough goods to supply the market.
– Deming’s method of solving PDCA issues;
– Quality circle quality improvement program
The father of the Toyota production method – Taiichi Ohno, has molded from many of the above to become Toyota’s own system. Only after more than 30 years from World War II to 1980, Japanese car products flooded the US and European markets, capturing the hearts of American consumers: low prices, great quality, rarely malfunctioning, beautifully designed, handy, user friendly, fuel efficient, lightweight.
Affect the US market and spread around the world
In the early 1980s, the US government was startled to realize that Japan had become a formidable competitor in industrial production and took away a large share of the American jobs. At that time, the US government learned how from a country that died from World War II, after only 30 years, surpassing the United States in technology and manufacturing industry.
The US government has introduced legislation limiting car imports and proposed Toyota to cooperate with General Motor to open a Toyota factory in the US – NUMMI. Since then, there is a generation of Americans who have direct access to, are made, imbued with the Toyota production method at the factory, with American workers, American suppliers, American culture … This generation has made efforts. packaging, systematizing the production method Toyota and called LEAN – Lean Manufacturing and since the 1990s, Lean has been popular throughout the United States and spread to the world.
Since then, Lean has become increasingly popular all over the world, with wide applications in: manufacturing, services, product development, technology, startup, lean thinking … All thanks to efficiency , easy to apply, easy to learn, simple, anyone can do it.
What problems does the lean manufacturing method solve?
Lean Manufacturing Methods help to root out and harmonize common production problems such as:
– Cost Optimization.
– Increase productivity.
– Increase the quality.
– Reduce waste.
– Ensuring production schedule and delivery.
– Reduced response time (Lead Time) to help capital turnover faster, while increasing flexibility to respond to changes in the market.
– Maintenance and good maintenance leads to reduce damage and stop production
– Everyone, every level is involved in improving their own work. From here, help them create more value and make their work important, meaningful and recognized and rewarded.
What tools does the Lean Manufacturing method include?
After more than 70 years of development around the world, Lean Manufacturing has formed a very powerful and diverse toolkit to solve the problems from the simplest to the most complex in manufacturing such as 5S, Kaizen, Visual Management. , TWI Industrial Training, Skill Improvement and Multi-Skills, Standardization of Work, Balance Line, TPM Overall Maintenance, Quality at Source, Poka-Yoke Failure Prevention, Systems scissors, Semi-finished supermarket, PDCA, Fishbone diagram, 5 Why, A3, Improved idea management system …
A common mistake of unsuccessful implementations is to regard lean as a toolkit. They meet that user, lack of systematic and especially lacking a sustainable business philosophy and right thinking. In order to minimize the waste and frustration in the implementation process, businesses should be consulted and led by reputable experts with many successful experiences in many industries to deploy quickly and effectively.
How is the lean manufacturing method organized?
The lean manufacturing tools are organized and systematized with the image of the house:
The Lean Manufacturing House systematizes the tools, and helps explain and deploy more smoothly. At the bottom is the foundation, on which is the production stabilization, with two pillars of productivity – progress and Quality. At the top is the roof with the values decided by the customers, and implemented the strategy.
After decades of development and transformation, each company learns and takes on the lean manufacturing approach and transforms it into its own approach, such as the Nike home of Lean:
While working as a Lean Coach at Nike, OPEX successfully deployed this Lean house to more than 20 garment and footwear factories in Vietnam and Cambodia, helping them improve each productivity, quality and time criteria. meet a few dozen%.
When to use the Lean Manufacturing method?
In your factory there are actually 2 small factories, one factory produces a good product, and the other one is completely wasteful: quality errors, fixing defects, waiting, shipping … and usually factory 2 is much bigger than factory 1. Start by being aware of the waste that is in your factory, and plan to apply Lean Manufacturing as soon as possible.
Production companies in many cases do not need to invest in new machinery, can fully utilize the existing people and machines to deploy lean. Production problems are often complex and intertwined: productivity problems can be caused by: quality, planning, raw materials, human resources, processes, machines, etc.
Therefore, usually factories deploying Lean production should have consulting units with enough depth, industry knowledge and experience to deploy effectively. If you are looking for a consultant, do not hesitate to leave contact information with OPEX. With more than a decade of deploying and consulting Lean Manufacturing for more than 50 factories, OPEX wants to share more with businesses that need it!
I don’t want you to get into the footsteps of failed businesses, when they do it the wrong way then fix, read and then do it themselves, most of them are unsuccessful, easily dismayed, and motivated to continue improve.
Wish your business find the right direction and soon succeed when applying Lean Manufacturing method.
OPEX Consulting – Operational Excellence Your Business
