I recently answered another question posed by a Linkedin user. Below is the question and my answer (designated as “best answer”).
The question:
What are the specific waste elimination projects you have identified in your business? Please provide details of strategy of waste identification, tools used and results achieved.
In this turbulent economic times, waste elimination should get required priority in each business. I am looking for some ideas to be shared to all.
My answer:
I’m involved in manufacturing in China, and my comments below may be relevant to that enterprise, and not to yours. But here’s my experience for your reference.
In starting waste reduction projects, I like to concentrate on a limited number of measurable results which:
- Are easily measured
- Can be obviously seen as succeding
- Have the most positive immediate effect on the organization
In my experience (and others may have differing experiences) an early concentration on WIP vs. Output, inventory turns, and manufacturing turnaround times (from reciept of order to shipment) are helpful. While these are not the only items to measure, I believe that getting these metrics “on track” will lead to benefits in other areas.
As for a few of the tools used:
- VALUE STREAM MAPPING (to identify waste in the process, and more importantly to teach the team how to identify waste)
- ONE-PIECE FLOW (to ensure that lines are balanced and bottlenecks can be easily identified, elevated, and optimized.)
- PRODUCTION FLOOR KANBANS (showing planned production quantities, actual production quantities and production yields)
- CDC or IN-LINE INSPECTION (where each operator is responsible for (C)hecking previous operators work, (D)oing his/her own process step, and (C)hecking his/her own work prior to passing the workpiece on to the next step.
Once you have gotten the low-hanging fruit out of these, you can move on to others.
Hope this helps
David
It is easy to disagree with my advice, as I advocate stressing the practical implementation up front, and choose to “backfill” the cultural or theoretical components of lean after the initial jumpstart. In my experience, it’s best to jump right into the lean strategies after one or two training sessions (so that everyone knows how we identify waste, and how to map a value stream). This way, the early “wins” speak for themselves, and help sell the concept much better than hours and hours of brainwashing/cheerleading.
The cultural aspects are extremely important and should not be disregarded, I only advocate that give a taste of things to come before the immersion in theory.
