Close Topic Options

Lean

Lean is almost a "catch all" phrase nowadays. Many things that people claim to be part of "lean" aren't really.

Here is a reference that explains a bit about Lean Manufacturing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

In reality, Lean Manufacturing is a philosophy, a way to approach manufacturing. One of the biggest things about Lean Manufacturing is that it stresses incremental improvement.

However, many companies have used "Lean" as a "program of the month" type of thing. That is, it is (was) "trendy" for management to say that they were "lean".

Lean Manufacturing really consists of a group of tools that help to eliminate waste in the total process, from materials acquisition through receiving, fabrication, assembly, inspection, packaging and shipping.

Because of the waste reduction factors, implementation of lean principles can greatly improve the profits of a company by reducing costs and increasing throughput.

Lean

"Flavor of the Month" is probably a gross understatement. In the plant I work at currently, they are going through "lean" initiatives. I have been in on some of the discussions and they have been quite interesting. The company has been using 6-sigma and Kaizen programs to do basically what LEAN is supposed to be doing. However, the key part of LEAN in this plant has been a project called "head count rationalization". Talk about putting a spin on firing people. Dont get me wrong, they need to figure out how to maximize (without overworking) the efforts of the work force and cut where opportunity presents itself, but what has the employees upset is the use of the word rationalization. They would just prefer to call it reduction. Looking at processes and figuring out where to improve waste is pretty fun for most engineers, because they can easily justify the existence (I know I like it) and LEAN is a way to do it.

The good thing for the top brass is that that can say we are on board with all the "flavors of the month" currently! And that is pretty important...to some.

I have always looked at Demming, TQM, Quality Circles, LEAN, Kaizen and 6 Sigma type programs as a normal way of looking at problems. I have always been mystified that someone can make millions off of boxing up what I considered common-sense! However, I guess that is why they are millionares and I am just a engineer...