Understanding Lean Manufacturing
                     Understanding Lean Manufacturing
Anthea Johnson
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The industry’s concern to supply a product or a service with excellence 
has opened an innumerable list of actions that need to be directed: 
improving productivity, reducing wastes, and training the personnel, and 
create a culture of quality. Mass production is one of the essential 
qualities of manufacturing and it should focus on the performance of 
production processes, a distraction can result in bad quality products. It is 
important to have senior management that cares about providing world-
class processes and high-quality products, these companies spend 
resources and time to update their staff on various methods and tools such 
as lean manufacturing.
The tools of lean manufacturing are called lean tools which include 5’s, 
Kanban, Kaizen, Kaikaku, Jidoka, Heinkunka, Push and Pull System, 
Poka-Yoke, SMED, Standard Work, TPM, Value Stream Mapping, 
Visual Factory, Manufacturing Cells, etc. 
Also the administrative staff updates communication, supervision, time 
management, teamwork skills between senior management and members 
of the organization. 
Lean manufacturing is the “systematic elimination of waste”. It is a 
Japanese method focused on 3M’s of Japanese words: Muda (waste), 
Mura (inconsistency), and Muri (unreasonableness). Generally, the waste 
can be divided into seven categories: Delays, early and excess production, 
making defective items, inventory, movement and transport, poor process 
design, and inefficient performance of a process.
Lean manufacturing is a combination of multiple tools to help to remove 
activities that do not add value to the process, service, and product by 
increasing the value of each activity, aimed to improve operations, and 
eliminate waste. 
Lean manufacturing focuses to reorganize the processes of waste 
reduction, minimizing steps, and thereby reducing costs.
There are subsystems (tools) in the lean manufacturing system and these 
subsystems are used to remove waste in organizations. The objectives of 
lean manufacturing are as given below:
1)Specification of the value for the customer
2)Identification of all actions required to bring the product from being a 
concept to being a launch, from order to delivery, from raw material to 
the customer’s hands
3)Removing any action that does not add value and align every action to 
add value as required by the customer
4)Analyzing the results and start the evaluation process again.
Today there is a new evolution in manufacturing and it is directed by two 
factors: (a) The sustained growth of the economy and (b) The old 
management styles are lacking to work with employees without multi-task 
training. Many organizations are adapting to lean manufacturing 
processes setting solid goals as given below:
1)Manufacturing of the quality product
2)Cost reduction projects
3)Total employee involvement
4)Cultural approaches
The concept of lean manufacturing is regarded as a significant departure 
from the automated factory so popular in recent years. Rather than batch 
manufactured for stock, the products are manufactured one at a time in 
response to the requirements of customers. The goal is to produce the 
required quantity only and no more. In today’s environment of 
manufacturing, assembly work is routinely characterized by constantly 
diminishing batch sizes and short production cycles. While the variety of 
models and product types increases.
An approach of lean manufacturing techniques depends much on 
flexibility and workplace organization, these techniques are also worthy 
of investigation as they remove large capital outlays for dedicated 
machinery until automation becomes absolutely necessary.
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