Toyota Lean manufacturing is a Japanese mothodology used normally when a company wants to reduce their production costs by following some steps with some tools like the 8 lean wastes or one piece flow. We tell you some of these lean tools to make sure you are applying the lean methodology in your company.
Kaizen.
Based on the fundamentals of lean, kaizen wants to make a continuous improvement in your manufacturing processes. With small changes, kaizen wants to make a bigger effect in a process.
This tool can also be applied with The Toyota way for the quality management of suppliers so you can have a full implementation of the lean philosophy.
In order to achieve a kaizen implementation, you will need to identify a problem, analyze it, develop an optima solution, implement it, study it and register the results to finally standardize the solution.
The 8 lean wastes.
Lean manufacturing wants to eliminate all the waste in order to have not only a cheaper but also a faster and efficient production. So, then to eliminate the waste you must know what is considered waste.
With the wastes and lean philosophy some new changes have been happening in the industry resulting in The new vision for supplier quality management
Some of these can be defective products or non-important activities that take too much time, based on this philosophy the 8 lean wastes are:
- Transportation
- Inventory
- Motion
- Waiting
- Over Processing
- Over Production
- Defects
- Non-utilized talent
Re-work even though means more production time and money can be a solution to these wastes because it is cheaper than sending to scrap, that’s why you need to know 3 vital questions before re-working a product.
The six big losses
Based on experience, the lean methodology has identified some problems in manufacturing that could imply big losses for the business.
At the time these losses can be presenting in your production line you will need the help of the quality inspectors to make sure your process and philosophy is being implemented the right way.
These six big losses could be breakdowns, setup & adjustment, small stops, reduced speed, startup rejections and production rejections.
One piece Flow
This tool wants to achieve a production flow that eliminates all the work-in-process through the production of one component at a time with all the work stations.
Is important to know that when you have a one piece flow production quality control and how you overcome the 3 biggest challenges in quality control will be a key part to your manufacturing success.
Contrary to a batch flow this single piece flow methodology wants to reduce the production time individually to make a bigger impact on the full production.
But how do you implement these tools in your company?
Is easy for some engineers to say what these lean tools are but bringing them to their areas of responsibility is the hard part. That is why some companies in search of having less costs and production time search for the help of experts in the area.
Yes, it can be provided by the own company with the hiring of engineers, technicians and inspectors BUT following the lean methodology, it will be better to have a cheaper solution to get these professionals in your company, right?
Don’t worry anymore! There is also a lean solution to these problems!
Hire engineering, technicians and quality residents for your company!
