What Lean Manufacturing Tools are Right for My Company?

If you are like thousands of other companies navigating the choppy financial waters of the 21st century, you have selected the Lean Management philosophy to help outfit your operation for both immediate survival and ultimate success. The goal of creating a smooth running, efficient, and waste free organization is laudable. But the nuts and bolts of successful Lean management are a little more complex than it may seem at first.

The Good Thing about Lean:

The good thing about the Lean approach to running your business is that it is not, strictly speaking, a method for success. Rather, it is a philosophy of running an organization with the help of a wide variety of tools, methodologies, and principles that have shown to be helpful at achieving your primary goal.

The Bad Thing about Lean:

The bad thing is the same as the good thing. Choice.

While having a wide variety of choices when implementing Lean means that you can tailor a solution that very closely fits your company’s needs, it also means that you have a lot Lean manufacturing tools to choose from. And choosing can be complicated.

Here is a short list of some of the top Lean Management tools available today:

• 5S: This tried and true methodology is almost always at the top of any list of manufacturing tools. Originating in Japan in during that country’s rise to dominance in the international automotive industry, the 5S methodology defines a specific framework for lean and effective operations. Many Lean tools are either based on 5S, or are designed work in conjunction with a 5S based operation.

• Bottleneck Analysis: This tool is pretty much what the title says. A series of techniques for identifying and eliminating elements of any procedure that creates a production bottleneck. Again, one of the primary goals of Lean is to create a smooth process. This tool recognizes the fact that this often has to be done in stages. Eliminate one bottleneck, and you begin to notice others.

• Andon Visual Feedback System: One of the key elements of an effective system is simple and clear methods of communications. Nothing can short circuit an operation quite like ignorance. The purpose of systems like Andon is to standardize the methods of disseminating and collecting information.

• Cellular Manufacturing: One of several methodologies designed to speed up the process of switching a line from one product or process to another. With cellular manufacturing, the equipment, supplies and personnel are organized by function, so that resources for similar products are located in close proximity. This allows teams to make manufacturing changeovers more quickly by combining production stations in the proper sequence.

• SMED: An acronym which stands for Single Minute Exchange of Die, it is another approach to speeding up the line changeover process. In this case, rather than having multiple stations available, SMED looks for ways to retool a line in less than 10 minutes. This can involve improvements to procedures, modification of machinery and attachments, and specialized training on how to do a fast changeover.

These are just a few of the top Lean manufacturing tools for creating and sustaining a Lean environment.