| Lean is… |
Lean is not…. |
- Applied in large and small businesses across industries - including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, food, agriculture
- A systematic process for the elimination of waste throughout the organisation
- A system which can achieve improvements in productivity, efficiency, workplace culture, safety, job satisfaction and more
- Best achieved when supported by senior management and implemented by front line employees
- About achieving more with what you have - improving the way business happens
- Pioneered by Toyota motor company (and continues to use many Japanese phrases)
- Refined and implemented for past 15 years globally and in Australia
Lean is about identifying the value and waste in a process - whether part of delivering a service or making a product or within marketing, administration or maintenance - in order to continually reduce waste and make improvements. |
- A simple cost cutting exercise
- About getting rid of people
- About cutting corners or taking risks
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| Lean concepts |
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According to Womack and Jones the principles are:
- Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family
- Identify all the steps in the value stream eliminating any that do not create value
- Ensure the value-add steps flow smoothly toward the customer
- Let customers pull value from the next upstream activity
- Pursue perfection through continuous improvement
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Lean identifies three key elements contributing to waste in an organisation:
- Instability/variation (Mura) – resulting in:
- Overproduction and stockpiling inventory
- Undermines efforts to eliminate waste
- Overburden (Muri) – resulting in:
- Waste (Muda) – most often in seven areas:
- Defects
- Overproduction
- Unnecessary inventory
- Transport
- Waiting
- Excess motion
- Unnecessary processing
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| Lean Tools |
| Lean provides a systematic process and a range of tools which can be used in various combinations to target waste. Lean tools are often referred to by their Japanese names and include Poke Yoke (mistake proofing), Just in Time (JIT), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Heijunka (leveling).Many organisations begin their Lean journey using the tools Kaizen, 5S and Value Stream Mapping (VSM). |
Kaizen Kaizen roughly translated means “continual improvement”. It is achieved by breaking down a process to find ways to make it better. It includes:
- Observing the process
- Identifying the value-adds
- Identifying the wastes
- Ideas and improvements from people who do the work using their knowledge common sense and intuition
- Many small, continuous improvements that collectively achieve large gains
Kaizen blitz – which targets a specific process to quick returns and ‘runs on the board’.
5S
The 5S tool comprises five steps that lead to an orderly and standardised way of working, helping to eliminate wastes such as waiting time, looking for tools and poorly used space. The steps are:
- Sort… to identify what is needed, when and how often
- Set in order… to ensure that things are available where and when they are needed – and things that are not needed are removed
- Shine… ensuring things are clean, in good working order and ready to use
- Standardise… establishing systems that make the first three steps part of routine practice
- Sustain… sometimes the hardest step, ensuring that these practices are maintained and the improvements in productivity are ongoing.
Value Stream Mapping
Value Stream Mapping provides a system and series of symbols which are used to observe and make a map of all aspects of a process including the activities, resources, locations, information flow and decision points. The map can then be used to:
- Identify which of these add value and which are ‘wastes’
- Identify the things that customer value
- Support the Kaizen process (above)
- Identify areas where value add can be maximised and where new products/services can be developed.
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