Lean manufacturing is a widely recognized and practiced business philosophy as many manufacturers have implemented some variation of practice into their operations. But, what are the benefits of lean manufacturing? In today’s blog, we’ll first detail what lean manufacturing is and then we’ll get into why companies use lean manufacturing.
What is Lean Manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing is a production method that focuses on eliminating waste while simultaneously maximizing productivity. In lean, waste is considered as anything that does not add value to a product and therefore, the customer is not willing to pay for it. Two lean concepts: the Toyota 3M Model and the Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing can help you to better identify and understand the different types of waste you should strive to minimize and eliminate to continually improve your process. To tackle inefficiencies and non-value added activities, there are many lean principles, and tools and techniques you can leverage. For example, 5S, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement), Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), and the PDCA Cycle.
Why Companies Use Lean Manufacturing
Manufacturing high-quality products, maintaining high productivity and efficiency, ensuring timely deliver of products to customers, reducing costs, and making a profit — all of these are priorities to any manufacturing company. But, because of today’s competitive global economy, and the demands and challenges faced by the manufacturing industry, managing and meeting these goals can be difficult. Lean manufacturing can help any manufacturing company navigate through difficult obstacles. Here are three reasons why companies use lean manufacturing:
Improved Product Quality
Improved product quality is one of the reasons why companies use lean manufacturing. High-quality products are very important in the manufacturing industry. This is because it affects the success of the company and helps establish its reputation in the market. What’s more, when manufacturing companies create high-quality products, they continue to meet customer demands, leading to fewer production costs, higher investment returns, and an increase in revenue.
By using lean manufacturing, manufacturing companies can use lean problem solving techniques, such as root cause analysis and the 5 Whys, to find the root cause of quality issues. As a result, this enables the manufacturer to strengthen their process and prevent the issue from occurring again. Therefore, creating better product quality.
Increased Efficiency
Increased efficiency is another reason why companies use lean manufacturing. Production efficiency allows manufacturing companies to use their current resources effectively to achieve maximum outcomes. In essence, it helps them eliminate production waste, reduce energy used to create products and services, and lowers production costs. By using lean manufacturing, this standardizes work for frontline employees in the production line. That is to say, frontline employees know exactly what to do and when to do it. Consequently, this enables each person to work in the most efficient manner, leading to overall improved production efficiencies. Additionally, by standardizing work, this helps supervisors better manage an area or the overall production line.
Increased Employee Morale
While this may not be evident at the start of implementation, increased employee morale is an additional reason why companies use lean manufacturing. Manufacturers choosing to go lean may initially face some resistance to change, but once employees accept the concept of lean, they will see the positive effects it will have on employee morale. Lean manufacturing requires 100 percent involvement and participation from the entire organization. Therefore, helping all employees realize that they are a valuable part of the team.
By practicing lean principles, and tools and techniques, this will create a more organized and clean work environment that is more pleasant for employees to work in. Moreover, efforts towards more efficient and less wasteful production methods can also make your employees’ work more productive and less tedious, further increasing employee morale.
Go Lean with TheLeanSuite
TheLeanSuite is a connected worker solution that can make the implementation of lean into your organization smoother and faster. It is designed to connect, support, and optimize frontline processes for a wide range of use cases. For example:
- — Quality
- — Safety
- — Maintenance
- — Operations
- — Continuous improvement
- — Training and development
- — Employee engagement
Our various built-in apps help improve the way your employees work in an industrial setting by digitizing and optimizing relevant processes to fit the needs of your company. Essentially, our connected worker solution helps you:
- 1. Move from paper-based work to digital work instructions
- 2. Create, assign, prioritize, and monitor work orders
- 3. Optimize simple and complex manufacturing processes
- 4. Deliver effective training, and foster collaboration and knowledge sharing
- 5. Create custom reports and gain insight into, and improve the performance of your workforce and overall operations
