Lean Management: Have You Heard of It?
Lean Management is a production management method aimed at reducing waste, improving performance, and boosting profitability. It is increasingly being adopted in manufacturing facilities, and we'll explain why! From its origins and fundamental principles to its practice and benefits, nothing will be left out to turn you into a Lean Management pro.
History and definition of Lean
Let’s take a brief look at history! Lean Management made its debut in the late 1940s when Toyota began discussing "Lean Manufacturing," which aimed to reduce processes that added no value to the final product. Given the significant improvements in productivity, efficiency, and profitability, some top leaders adopted it, and that's how Lean began its journey across numerous industries.
In the early 1990s, researchers from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) took a closer look at this system by comparing it to other major production modes in the automotive industry, among others. After extensive studies, Toyota's system was deemed the most efficient production mode. Numerous analyses followed, and thus, Lean Management was born. Subsequently, Lean was integrated into many corporate organizational strategies, far beyond just production.
Later, as robots, artificial intelligence, and other smart technologies emerged, factories quickly realized that combining Lean with digital technology was a way to create even more agile production lines that could better adapt to market shifts. Lean is a method that grows with its time, and its prospects for evolution are still immense.
Thus, this management aims to create more value for the customer, continuously improve performance within factories, and involve all employees of a company. That's why many businesses implement it at all levels. And if you want to summarize it in one sentence: well-mastered Lean will significantly improve your production methods and your factory’s gains.
Fundamental Principles
If you’ve read the first part of the article and are still here, you want to know the fundamental principles and learn how to implement actions to improve your performance. And because we at KEYPROD are nice, we'll give you that pleasure!
Lean Management is a concept that has been adopted by many factories which have adapted it and thus offer different ways of approaching it. You can find all the Lean concepts on the internet and find the one that may match your needs 100%. In the meantime, we'll talk about the general principles of Lean so you better understand what it will enable you to achieve.
We'll explain these using the example of a screw production factory that wants to apply Lean to evolve its production and profitability.
Eliminate Unnecessary Tasks ➡️ Do you gather teams daily for 20 minutes to discuss the previous day's production figures? Instead of wasting precious production time, display a document near the coffee machine that they can check at their convenience or on a screen during production team meetings and offer to discuss these figures with them if they wish.
Adopt Processes Adaptable to Everyone ➡️ An operator complains of pain from feeling vibrations from his machine all day, and you install a foam system to alleviate the pain. Install it on all your equipment to prevent the problem in other operators.
Have Sustainable Solutions ➡️ If you encounter a recurring problem with a machine, such as a tool that wears out too quickly, instead of just letting it be or blindly changing suppliers, investigate the root causes and find a sustainable solution.
Accelerate Solutions That Work and Modify Those That Do Not ➡️ Has working in pairs on the production line proven effective for the night team? Do it with the day teams. Conversely, if it has given no result, review how to implement it so everyone sees the benefits of working in pairs.
Continuous Improvement ➡️ After finding a sustainable way to operate your organization, regularly analyze it to see new optimizations you can make.
And that’s how Lean works! You must look long-term, thinking of operational and strategic improvement for all players in your company. The implementation of this management must be considered collectively, and action plans must be co-constructed to be as effective as possible.
"Lean management is a philosophy, a mindset! It's not just about implementing a tool to improve processes but doing it by bringing all the collaborators along. To do good Lean, humans must be at the heart of the approach. Indeed, the willingness to lead your collaborators to take responsibility for giving meaning to all of their actions is crucial for Lean to be effective.
Thus, this method gives managers the keys to ensure employees are invested in what they do, understanding the importance of their role so that it then benefits the company. Remember that not everything needs to be implemented within your organization, and it is possible to pick a few elements that adapt to your needs. Test & Learn will then be your best ally to understand what works, or not, for you and it will help you not to cross the known limits of lean management."
Matthieu LOGER - Industrialization Manager at JPB Système
Benefits of Lean
You’ve probably already understood that practicing Lean within your factory can only be beneficial for your production. But we've decided to list some advantages to give you even more reason to implement it:
👉 Cost Reduction Through Lean Pull-Flow Work: Reduce the time between when an order is placed and payment is made by the customer, thereby also reducing storage costs.
👉 Better Collaboration: Lean encourages communication between collaborators from different teams, which improves decision-making.
👉 Productivity Improvement: No surprise here! Thanks to Lean, your productivity will be boosted with optimized production processes and reduced waiting and non-production times.
👉 Improved Working Conditions: As it involves collaborative work, your factory personnel can highlight everyday issues and request improvements for better production. Also, they participate in changes, and the sense of belonging to the company can increase motivation.
👉 Better Structured Work Environment: By practicing Lean, you have the opportunity to make your factory an organized place where it is pleasant to work. This also helps strengthen safety.
👉 Quality Improvement: With precise identification of sources of defects or failures, you can increase the quality of your production in the long term with the implementation of sustainable processes.
👉 Better Customer Satisfaction: The last advantage we'll talk about, and not the least! By focusing on creating value to be in constant improvement, Lean allows you to more effectively meet customers' needs and thus retain them.
This list can of course be extended and adapted to the activities and needs of each company. It is still important to perceive the added value of the basic principles of this method.
It has some limits...
Like any revolutionary management method, it has its limits. Being aware that they exist, you can therefore adjust your way of doing things to only take the good part of this concept. Here are the main limits we know of:
⚠️ Implementation can be complex: significant investment in time and resources
⚠️ Lean can lead to a certain rigidity in processes, limiting flexibility and adaptability
⚠️ Risk of stress in case of excessive pressure to meet productivity objectives
⚠️ Limited in some areas where process variability is too great (custom production, for example)
Consider these limits before wanting to implement a Lean strategy, to study the feasibility and set a framework for it to be only benevolent, with the aim of improvement and not degradation of working conditions or the quality of production.
And KEYPROD in Lean?
A good entry point into a Lean strategy is to follow and measure your production performance. The idea is simple! We do not change, or change little, what works and we measure efficiency to find quick productivity gains.
With the combination of KEYNETIC and KEYVIBE IoT boxes and the KEYPROD online platform, you have an extremely easy-to-use tool to measure your production performance. You aggregate real-time data (like production times) and can measure OEE but also establish a Pareto of losses in just a few minutes. From there, this data will allow you to make concrete and effective decisions to improve your production.
Lean is a concept that many industries use and adapt according to their needs or activity. There are dozens of tools designed to better manage production such as 5S, Kanban, Gemba Walk, Kaizen… But we will return to them another time. Before wanting to use tools and thus implement action plans, you must understand the stakes and set the limits in the right place so that it remains collaborative. Before even wanting to produce better, and more, keep in mind that humans must maintain an important place and that without the collaboration of all the actors, Lean cannot be properly implemented.
