Saturday, February 25, 2006

Introduction to lean manufacturing tools and techniques

Unlike many of you might think lean manufacturing tools and techniques are very simple. These tools are serving a particular purpose. Each and every tool is designed to serve the concepts of lean manufacturing, which will ultimately aim to eliminate the wastes.

We can see many tools used to achieve the basic requirement of lean manufacturing. Among them few are very special. You will find them only in lean environment. Some though are commonly known but used very differently in lean manufacturing environments. We will have a look into them in brief.

It is very important to know the current inefficiencies and problems the system has. Lean manufacturing use process mapping to serve this purpose. Process mapping is also used to understand the ideal future process.

To identify the causes to the problems, lean manufacturing use Ishikawa diagrams or cause-effect diagrams. To identify the historical reasons and variations lean manufacturing use histograms. There are many, many tools like this which are used to achieve the lean manufacturing final objective.

In the core of lean manufacturing, there is JIT or Just In Time techniques. JIT purchasing, JIT manufacturing and JIT distribution are parts of this. Work cells are used to reduce the manufacturing wastes and impart high flexibility to the system. Total productive maintenance techniques are used to improve the performance of the system by reducing the breakdowns and stoppages. SMED or Single Minute Die Exchange techniques are used to reduce the setup time of the system. This will help in improving the flexibility of the system and of cause will reduce the lead time. Kanban techniques are used to improve the communication process in manufacturing. This is required to have a seamless flow of manufacturing.

Having the tools is one thing. Use them to the best effect is another. I will give you more information about tools and techniques used in lean manufacturing in my future posts. For more information you can visit http://www.lean.devisland.net

You can get the FREE e-book “lean manufacturing basics” by filling the simple form in the navigation bar.

I am going to open a lean manufacturing products shop soon on http://www.leanmanufacturingproducts.com You will find all your lean manufacturing accessories here

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