Lean ThinkingSummary
notes from book the book authored by James Womack and Daniel Jones
Originally
provided by Duke Rohe – edited and embellished by Greg Hart
·
Lean Thinking is a way
to do more with less and less, while providing customers what they want - when
they want.
·
Starting point of lean
thinking is to understand value as defined by the ultimate customer.
- Do you look at your
product or service through the eyes of the customer?
- Paradigm problem:
Most producers want to make what they are already making and customers
only know how to ask for a variation of what they are already getting.
- Value is often seen
in light of the producer’s needs, not the customer’s.
- Rethink value: accept
the challenge of redefinition. To
find more customers and build sales quickly, find their needs as quickly
as possible.
- Look at what you do
as part of an entire value system.
Then you can make changes that exert all energies toward creating
value.
- Value stream is the
set of actions to turn raw material into goods or services needed by the
customer.
- Stop thinking of the
aggregate of activities and begin looking at those activities required to
produce and how they interact.
Challenge those activities not in concert to optimize value to the
customer.
- An optimized value
stream is the irreducible minimum set of activities needed to design,
order and make product in a continuous smooth flowing process.
·
Muda
is the Japanese term for waste or non-value added activities. We tend to accept waste as part of doing
business. Eight wastes are defined as over-production, inventory,
transportation, motion, waiting, excess processing, defects and underutilizing
people’s talents.
- To envision flow
value – look at activities and times (cycle times and lead-times) related
to producing the service or activity.
- What percentage of
time is the value stream flowing vs. idle?
- Flow thinking is
counterintuitive to a functional thinker.
- In a lean system –
all its moving parts are transparent so that suppliers, employees and
distributors see everything. It is
easier to create value when you see all the moving parts.
- It cannot be stressed too much. Make your system transparent to all. How it flows, how it can be crippled, and what is its status?
- A lean system’s eyes
are those of its workforce - talking constantly about fixing problems and
implementing improvements. Every
individual can identify production status at all times.
- When you’ve fixed something, fix it again – continuous improvement.
- The more inventory
you have, the less likely you are going to have the specific parts you
need.
- In a lean system,
customers pull products from producers as they need. Being able to flex to meet shifting
needs is key.
- Pull means no one upstream
should produce a good or service until customer downstream asks for it –
pull one, make one, move one.
- Remove your staffing anchor draggers (usually 10%)
- Two steps forward, one step back is OK. No steps forward is Not OK.
- Convince your suppliers and customers to take these same steps. Their success is your success.
- Accounting systems must shift along with your lean production thinking.
- Set prices in declining targets and quality reliability at increasing goals so it makes it impossible for the staff, suppliers and customers to relax.
- Lean is not so much
about cost reduction, as it is about reducing time to market, shortening
lead-times and providing impeccable customer service.
- Top-down leadership
need to convert to bottom-up initiatives.
- America must overcome
the “every firm for itself” mentality
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