Lean manufacturing
Lean Manufacturing as a translation of English "lean production " and " lean manufacturing " originally referred to the Womack / Jones / Roos in the MIT study at Japanese automakers corpus of and systematized production organization, which in the U.S. and Europe at the time ( 1980s - years) prevailing and of them so-called buffered production ( "buffered production" ) was opposed. Shah / Ward, 2007 to understand, regardless of this related to the former definition of the situation, now lean production as an "integrated socio-technical system, whose core objective is the elimination of waste, are by simultaneously reducing or minimizing supplier side, customer side and internal fluctuations ".
Portion of lean management
Already Womack / Jones / Roos described more than a pure production system. Thus, the term soon concepts such as lean management ( " Lean Administration " ) or lean maintenance was ( " Lean Maintenance " ) framed as well as to companies whose production is characterized by unique or small batch production, expanded and eventually Sleek Management ( " Lean management" ) further developed. This is understood now a corporate philosophy of ( to the smallest setting ) omitting all superfluous operations in production and in the administration by a more intelligent organization. It is based on innovative changes in the value chain and the accompanying actors ( such as customers, suppliers, trade unions, investors, community ) and on a partnership self-understanding of leading and executing actors ( employee management ).
Principles of Lean Production
In Lean Production is a set of principles, the sought effects are primarily caused by their interaction. It is therefore little sense to establish one of these principles and others, from whatever reason, omit. Generally it comes
- Bring together expertise and responsibility,
- To work in networks,
- To avoid waste and errors ( Muda )
- To synchronize the processes and
- To strive for continuous improvement (Kaizen, KVP ) and
- Restructure if necessary ( Kaikaku ).
As consequences of lean production often can be observed:
- More responsibility and competence at the "base"
- Focusing on the essentials and therefore
- Significantly reduced waste,
- Improved communication within the company and with customers and with suppliers,
- Customer orientation and
- Intensive control by the " pull principle ", for example with Kanban.
In essence, Lean Production relies on seven elements:
In an attempt to introduce lean production has often jumped too short. The principles were considered in isolation and counted each other. Before then often following finding: "Then let 's missing is the group work " was the boom of this work organization in the 1990s. Individual elements of the overall concept, which totally ignored their tightly knit relationships, but little having been successful.
Waste
Finding and eliminating waste is a key element of Lean thinking. In the Japanese approach particularly emphasizes the consequence of the implementation of waste minimization. Waste is anything that does not contribute directly to value creation.
As waste all expenses are considered, for which the customer would not be willing to pay.
As a result of its own to focus on the value creation process and a classification into core process ( creates immediate customer benefits ), support process ( is essential for the processing of the core processes ), reactive process (caused overhead without contributing to customer value ) and failure process ( destroyed already created customer value ). The latter two are to be avoided, the first two to organize as much as possible.
For the kind of production often eight forms of waste are identified and classified:
It is important to differentiate between avoidable and unavoidable waste. Many documentation processes are, for example, often can not be avoided (which must be carefully checked ), but among orthodox point of view still " waste ". Avoidable wastes are to eliminate consistently.
The Kaizen techniques with its 5S, SMED, Jidoka (also called Autonomation ), Poka -Yoke, Heikinka (also called leveling ), Heijunka (also called Smoothed production ), etc. has become similar to TQM as an independent concept of the Lean Production System out developed.
Process orientation
A key message in the lean production is of completion of a product constantly further process the material from the start of the production process. This means that no amounts of buffer (see Verschwendungsart " overproduction " ) between process steps occur more. The immediate consequence of this is a much shorter lead time with beneficial consequences in terms of flexibility, delivery reliability and capital commitment. Furthermore, there is a increase in surface productivity and less waste by material transport, inventory etc. The ideal state of continuous flow production is the one- piece flow (Eng. Bound staff work flow).