What is Lean Manufacturing? Principles of application

Currently, many businesses are moving towards the lean production model (Lean Manufacturing) because of the great benefits that this system brings. In the article below, let's learn with 1C Vietnam what the Lean Manufacturing model is as well as the benefits and principles of applying this model.

1. What is lean manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing or Lean Manufacturing is a combination of management methods that are widely used around the world. This model was created to eliminate waste and unreasonable problems in the production process. This helps save costs, time and increase competitiveness for businesses.

Lean manufacturing originates from the Toyota production system (TPS) and has been implemented throughout the company's operations since 1950. Before 1980, Toyota was widely known for its effective implementation of the Just system. -In-Time (JIT) and today the company is considered one of the typical companies in successfully applying Lean Manufacturing methods.

2. Main goal of lean production

As mentioned above, lean production methods help save costs, time, human resources and resources during the production process. The main goals of the Lean Manufacturing model include:

• Optimize factory layout based on effective rearrangement and flow of raw materials.
• Speed up production cycle times by minimizing waiting time between stages.
• Save and minimize the resources needed for product quality inspection.
• Focus on building and developing closer relationships with more reliable and quality suppliers.
• Optimize source quality by reducing the number of suppliers.
• Eliminate product models that bring little added value to customers.
• Conduct information exchange using electronic channels with customers and suppliers.

3. Benefits of lean production for businesses

Lean manufacturing helps businesses make small improvements to eliminate waste, increase product quality and improve production efficiency. This strategy mainly focuses on improving customer needs in terms of delivery time and product quality. Here are the benefits of the lean manufacturing model, including:

• Increased flexibility and productivity: Lean manufacturing systems will start by moving components immediately after completion (single piece flow) instead of waiting to move in batches. This helps save time, increase productivity and flexibility in the production process.
• Eliminate waste: Lean production methods help minimize waste of resources and time by eliminating wasteful bottlenecks and reducing waiting time between stages in the production line.
• Improve quality: Moving each part during the production process allows timely monitoring and detection of defective products and components before mass production. This helps improve quality and minimize errors and failures of products and components.
• Reduce inventory costs: Applying lean production methods helps businesses minimize inventory costs of input materials, finished products and semi-finished products. From there, businesses can save costs on warehouse rental and human resources to manage.
• Motivate employee morale: An effective lean production strategy allows employees to participate in improving product quality. This will boost working morale, improve productivity and contribute to bringing revenue to the business.

4. Principles of applying the lean production model

When applying lean production methods, businesses need to understand the following 6 main principles:

4.1. Eliminate waste

In lean manufacturing , businesses should be aware of what should and should not be done to increase production value from the customer's perspective. At that time, businesses need to pay attention to eliminating any materials and features that are no longer suitable for customer needs.

4.2. Standardize the process

Standardize the production process by fully implementing detailed instructions in production activities including sequence, content, time, human resources and results for all production activities. From there, businesses can unify the way workers conduct their work.

4.3. Optimize performance

Optimizing performance is about running a continuous process, without bottlenecks, detours or waiting, reducing production cycle time by up to 90%.

4.4. Apply Just in time

The Just in time principle advocates producing only what is necessary. The production process is always influenced by the following stages, so each workshop only produces according to the requirements of the previous stages. When an order is received from the customer and communicated to the factory, the production order is first sent to the end of the production process.

4.5. Quality management at source

Quality management at the source focuses on monitoring and supervising quality at each stage, right from the source of input materials. This is to avoid wasting resources and ensure output product quality.

4.6. Continuous process improvement

Continuous process improvement allows wasteful bottlenecks to be detected and eliminated in a timely and effective manner. This helps businesses avoid obsolescence in the production process, while streamlining work steps, avoiding waste of human resources and company resources.

It can be seen that applying the lean production model to the production process is bringing a lot of practical efficiency. Enterprises applying this model can increase labor productivity, optimize production costs and increase competitiveness. Don't forget to follow other articles on 1C Vietnam's website to update useful information about production and business management.