Lean Manufacturing Tools

Kaizen is a system that strives for continuous improvement in areas of quality, technology, processes, company culture, productivity, safety, and leadership. the thought is that each employee and each level of the organization can make suggestions for improvement. While these suggestions often don't cause major change, over time, small improvements can add up and cause significant reductions in wasted resources. In Japanese, Kaizen means continuous improvement or good change. In truly lean companies, it's a philosophy that permeates every aspect of the company’s culture. it's the relentless pursuit of eliminating waste.

Kanban is pull production system designed to eliminate inventory waste and overproduction. When an assembly item or stocked item begins to cease, an employee trips a visible reorder tool that triggers an automatic reorder of inventory. The inventory is solely enough to replenish the amount consumed and prevents the needless accumulation of inventory. This happens with minimal human intervention, and ensures that production continues with none hindrances or hiccups. This helps manufacturers to stay inventory low by reacting to needs, instead of making wrong guesses about order quantities.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) - VSM may well be a visual tool that organizations use as an instance, analyze, and understand the flow of materials from supplier to customer further because the flow of data within the organization. The goal of VSM is to spot production or information bottlenecks that may be eliminated by optimizing man hours, time, and material costs.

Total Quality Management (TQM) - First implemented by Western service, TQM is also a comprehensive, organization-wide approach that seeks to boost the standard of products and services a corporation produces. The goal of TQM is to continuously refine and fine-tune processes through the phases of the Deming Cycle: Plan, Do, Check, and Act (PDCA). TQM puts a powerful emphasis on customer satisfaction and has the potential to completely streamline change the way a corporation operates.

Jidoka - The concept of Jidoka first gained traction within the 19th century. the concept is to style equipment that's partially automated and might stop whenever a defect is detected. Basically, somebody's worker oversees an automatic process and, when the strategy is stopped, the worker will intervene to unravel the matter.

Not only does Jidoka reduce costs and improve productivity by only requiring one worker on-site, it ultimately reduces the number of defects that are produced; which finishes up in increased customer satisfaction. Jidoka is that the concept of “don't pass defects down-stream”, you own the matter. We must reduce defects by preventing errors, etc. it's often compared to poke-yokes, the concept of “error-proofing” an operation.