Many people experience some interesting reactions when they are first introduced to the concept of "Lean Manufacturing". A typical response is:

"I've been in business for more than 25 years, I must be doing something right because I'm still here especially with the economy like it is. How is Lean Manufacturing going to help me improve my business? I am not a Toyota or a Ford, I manufacture custom products on a make to order basis in small batch quantities. So, tell me how I fit into the lean model?"

Many would agree with this statement on face value. It is totally true from the perspective of the individual expressing it. However, the challenge is this, can anyone really believe that business has not dramatically changed during the last 25 years? The real test is to ask a simple question.  "Are your competitors of the same opinion?" If they are then you have no problems, but what if they are not? Can anyone really accept the idea that a business can remain competitive by continuing to do the same thing, year after year?

Lets use a simple example, take the words "Made in Japan." What did people think of Japanese products 25 years ago? Here are some examples:

• Not as good as home made products

• Poor quality

• Copies

• Low tech

• Poor design

 So, after 25 years what do consumers think of Japanese products in today's market? Here are some examples:

• Better than home made products

• Best quality

• Innovation

• High tech

• Trustworthy designed

Japanese products lead the world in quality and innovation and this has forced many nations including the USA and many European countries to take a serious look at the way they manufacture products for consumers. It forced them to look at their ability to supply their customers because the Japanese were starting to make inroads into markets that where once believed to be secure from external influences. In today's global market consumers are much more educated to seek the best deal, and do not necessarily buy products manufactured in their own country. In fact, many Japanese products have now become household names because of their incredible focus on quality and customer service e.g. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Sony, etc. 

Traditional manufacturing methods were developed during the age of mass production which focused on economy of scale and machine utilization. It created the idea that if the machine was idle, it was loosing money, so it was kept running at all costs. Traditional companies achieve customer satisfaction by maintaining large inventories in anticipation of customer orders. They did this by keeping a machine running with a specific setup for as long as possible to reduce the unit cost. This method of manufacturing is known as "Batch and Queue" because parts are made in batches and upon completion they are moved and placed into a queue where they wait for the next operation to become available . The main problem with this practice is machine set-up times define the length of the product run time. Long set-up times do not allow for smaller runs because it would be considered ridiculous to take six hours to set-up a machine and only run it for an hour. There are many other disadvantages with traditional manufacturing, but some of the main ones are:

• A product encounters a combination of three things during a process:

  1. Being moved from one location to the next, 

  2. Being processed

  3. Waiting for the next process.

  Studies have proven that in a traditional business, the during the total time taken for a product to go through the manufacturing process it is being moved or waiting 90% of the time and is only being processed for 10% of the time.

• Difficulty trying to schedule the job because of the time a product is simply waiting for the next process to become available and set-up times.

• A longer machine setup time results in a higher percentage of lost production time, because while the machine is down, nothing is produced.

• Product quality suffers because if parts in a batch are made incorrectly, the problem will not usually be noticed until the next operation starts to work on them. This results in a higher level of rework, which is costly and ties up valuable resources.

Lean manufacturing focuses on the waste throughout the process and ways to reduce set-up and cycle times. Doing this will allow more flexibility and smaller quantities of parts to be made. This results in reduced inventory, shorter lead times and allows more frequent deliveries to the customer.

The ultimate goal of Lean manufacturing is to reduce waste in order to produce what the customer wants, when they want it and deliver it in the fastest time. This is a total turn around from the traditional focus on economy of scale, because the focus of Lean Manufacturing is to achieve "Continuous or Single Piece Flow". A simple way of understanding this concept is "Make one, pass one". This can only be achieved by linking operations to eliminate or reduce the total time a part is traveling or waiting in between each operation, and this includes machine set-up time.

During the process of creating product flow all activities are identified and categorized as "Value Adding" or "Non-value Adding." When you  know which part of the process is a "Non-value adding"  activity, you can eliminate, reduce or combine it. Before implementing a Lean program, it is not unusual to find that non-value adding activities (waste) make up 90% of the total lead time required to ship a product . So, can you imagine the impact to the bottom line if this waste is reduced by 10 - 20%.