Lean Manufacturing

Lean Training, Internal staff development for sustainability, Kaizen Events & Rapid Response Team, Lean Implementation.

Corporate complete lean strategic enterprise development.

There is several ways you can approach your Lean Program

1. Our recommended approach is the Lean Thinking implementation approach which is the most effective “Lean Enterprise” approach. (See below)
    
2. “Kaizen Event” or “Kaizen Blitz” approach, which is where you have an urgent business imperative to improve a process, section or department within your organisation, and you want the improvement to be swift and effective and results to reach the customer and/or bottom line as quickly as possible. We can lead and support your team conducting the Kaizen, or we can complete the entire rapid improvement process for you.  Contact us now to make it happen for you
    
3. A funded, nationally accredited training program that reaches a large number of shop floor employees, support employees, supervisors and managers. This can be in line with option 1 above. The program is called “Competitive Manufacturing”, and is federally funded and can be cost neutral, with the added benefit of delivery or real improvements from the applied training projects.  Contact us for more information or for us to organise everything          

Lean Thinking         

Essentially, Lean brings together an operating environment that has integrated within it:

• A preventative approach to any interruptions to workflow, poor quality, issues relating to OH&S, environmental concerns and compliance issues. 
• Continuous improvement by the elimination of waste and standardised work.
• Ideas and initiatives being explored and implemented through engaged Employee Kaizen activities.

The five key principles are:

• Specify in your particular process, value stream or supply chain what does and does not add value from a customer’s needs viewpoint and it must be in relative micro detail. The more detail the less risk when changing and improving.
• Identify in an activity map detail all of the steps required in the process, including processing the order, design, scheduling, manufacture, etc required along the way until delivery or even payment. 
• Design your process steps that do add value so that there is no waste in the form if bottlenecks, constraints, detours, waiting etc so they flow without impedance.
• Only make to demand. Only produce when a product or service is pulled through your process or value stream. Only process what is needed, when it is needed, in the exact quantity needed and delivered to exactly where it is needed.
• Strive for perfection as there is no end state to improvement. We can always improve further. Continually remove waste layer by layer.

Lean Implementation

Generally the common mind model that Lean Thinking provides to executives, middle management and employees in general is an extremely powerful tool and should be considered the first step in gaining a common understanding, vision and language. By engaging your senior management team in Lean Thinking, Practices and Principles awareness workshop over 2 days will equip them with enough information to create a lean strategy and preferred approach for the business. The next step is to assign or appoint a senior manager or managers the responsibility for the launch and implementation of the Lean strategy.

Engage application training and support resource, preferably ours, and begin training from management cascading down increasing in detail. The training of lean tools and techniques is applied just in time to strategic improvement projects, each training activity building on relevant or the required skills needed to be applied. The various champions within the organisation will emerge during this stage and they become the individual project leaders and eventually the trainers.

This is the most effective and only sustainable approach to having a lean enterprise.  Contact us for a quote and support.

See also Quality, OH&S, Environmental and Project Management

The Eight general requirements for Lean

These are not meant to be separate implementation projects, they are meant to be integral or applied holistically in each improvement initiative.

Beware though we need to have stability and a good firm foundation in the current state of work practices and processes before moving toward a future state. Control and stability is required in quality, OH&S, standardised work, housekeeping, inventory, scheduling etc first, this in itself may provide significant benefits to the organisation.  

Contact us to conduct an audit and report on your current state.     

We have worked with Inghams Enterprises, Clyde Apac, James Hardie, Email, Jarrett Synergy, Taylors Wines, BHP, Lysaghts, Exacto Plastics, Hardie Irrigation, Ellex Lasers, Repco, Debortoli Wines, Fielders and many more.