LEAN Processes

The very essence of LEAN is of course waste reduction. Waste reduction is a never ending process of review & improvement to refine the process again and again to remove all the excess waste that's costing you money. So where do you start? It's a little different for everyone purely based on where the biggest bang for the buck is, but the bigger question is where does it stop? the production floor? nope, Lean can be applied to every single process within your business to drive out the hidden waste that is in your business.
When we look at the 8 wastes it's probably easy for everyone to tick off the key ones that affect them the most, :
  • Defects - we all have these, but are there consistent trends that can be focused on and eliminated?
  • Overproduction - making more than you need, 'just in case' or to cover for excess defects to ensure you meet a delivery date is a typical example
  • Waiting - either the next step isn't ready or your set up is taking too long - have a read of our SMED page
  • Non-Utilised Talent - this is a biggie that people forget - you have a pile of great process engineers hanging out on your production floor!
  • Transportation - unnecessary movement of the product or materials around the production facility or to the end customer creates delays
  • Inventory - too much production just ties up money, it's a bit like goldilocks, not too much, not too little, it needs to be just right
  • Motion - this is all about how you use your people, can we minimise the movement they have to do, less lost time, less tired staff = better results
  • Extra-Processing - So the customer has paid you for the basic widget, but your producing the Premium widget with that other material, why?

By a happy co-incidence (ok not really) it spells out DOWNTIME which is the key thing we want to reduce.

You need your equipment working on the right thing at the right time, working on the wrong thing is just the same as having the plant shut down 


What drives YOUR Waste?

Extra Parts made
Extra Inventory
Not Using Your People

Problem Solving and Waste Reduction

So you have identified that you need to improve, which is great, so where do you start, where are the low hanging fruit?

Again I have some great news for you, your team already know and they are probably working on it individually, but what if we could get everyone to work on it together and moreover, all be crystal clear about what the problem is and what actions we need to focus on to fix it.

Operations consist in their basic terms in 2 forms:

  1. Value Add - the things a customer will pay for, but you still want to make this as simple and streamlined as possible
  2. Non-Value Add - the real waste - there are 2 types
    1. Obvious Waste - the stuff that jumps out at you when you just take 5 mins to look for it, eliminate this
    2. Hidden Wastes - this stuff you need to go find, some you can eliminate and so you can only minimise, for instance if you're running a PVC extrusion line you tend to have 'head spill' that's the PVC that spills out the front, you need it to do this, but can you make it the absolute minimum that you can?
There are then a host of tools we can through at the non value add stuff to get to the real key area's of working
  • SMED
  • Fishbones
  • Value Stream mapping
  • 8D Reporting
  • Std work routines
  • Total Productive Maintenance
  • spaghetti charts

the list goes on, the key with it all, get people involved and build a team and we can probably help you with that.

How it Works

The steps are simple..


Define Your Business Goal



Agree The Outcomes




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You can also call John on 0211649739 to set up a meeting 

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