Lean Manufacturing Requires Consistency

Posted on Author Mike Wilson
1 min read

Lean Manufacturing is considered a management philosophy which focuses on creating a better workplace by considering the expenses of resources for any goal rather than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and consequently a target for elimination.

This Production Practice Is A Variation

on the theme of efficiency based on optimizing flow, and as mentioned by Bryan Zeigler in Lean is Good; consistency is vital for lean transformation. This is especially important when the workforce is introduced for the first time to the lean manufacturing process, which would mean special care needs to be taken to ensure consistency thereby avoiding confusion.

He noted that there is usually a discrepancy between mixed messages provided when it comes to the old world metrics that challenge the new ‘lean rules.’ For instance, a company could set up a pulling system and install rules to only produce when there is a signal from the downstream customer, however while a team is following the rules, demand drops for a few days, and they get reprimanded for not meeting old production unit goals. The team will end up becoming perplexed as to whether they should follow the old rules or abide by the new ones.

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Kaizen Guide: Better your business with continuous improvement

To be successful, you can’t make an improvement once and forget about it. Effective lean businesses use kaizen, which means “continuous improvement”. In kaizen, everyone looks for ways to improve processes on a daily basis. This Kaizen Guide explains the kaizen mindset, basic kaizen concepts including the PDCA cycle, and real-world examples.

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Thereby the importance of consistency cannot be stressed enough.

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