Definitions Of Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing

The word lean became popular after the publication of Womack book “The Machine That Changed the World” (1990), which breaks down the benefits of the Japanese manufacturing philosophy, in particular the Toyota Production System (TPS). Womack analyses many improvements applications influenced by TPS and identifying its essential causes as the principals of Lean Thinking. For that, when speaking of Lean thinking or manufacturing we are also by definition speaking about Toyota Production System.

Before understanding the history of Lean Manufacturing I would like to explore its definition from several different perspectives and compare it to other philosophies, discussing its limitations and misconceptions.

The popular definition of Lean Manufacturing is:

Lean is a comprehensive set of techniques that, when combined and matured, will allow you to reduce and then eliminate the seven wastes, adapting to changes and creating an effective value chain centered into Continuous Improvement and

Stock

In the traditional view, stocks are used to avoid the interruption of processes during fails and breaks, but in the other hand stocks fill potential productive space and extra allocate human and bureaucratic resources. The Lean view sees stocks as “the mother of all evils” [Ghinato, 1996], that’s because it can lead to many other problems, such as hiding quality problems, as it creates independent phases and breaks up the process flow as a whole.

Lean Principles

As mentioned before lean thinking is a philosophy that aims increasing output with minimum resources by reducing waste and accepting only what really add value to the client. After analyzing TPS Womack came with five essential principles of lean thinking

1. Specify what customers Value:

Value is what the customer wants and only what the customer wants. This requires a precise understanding of the specific needs of the customer. It is said that more than 95% of process activities do not add