In this article, the Lean Expert Charles Intrieri give us his point of view on what is lean.
What is Lean for me (Charles).
Lean is the elimination of all waste in a company, increasing throughput and bringing value to the customer beyond their expectations.
Lean is a new way of doing business. The company culture must change.
# Lean People
People become process and problem solvers.
# Top (Lean) Management
Top Management comes to the shop floor and works with shop floor people at gemba (work cell/shop floor) to solve problems and improve processes daily.
# The Lean Journey
Lean is a never ending journey. Lean is daily continuous improvement by people and management.
# Lean Methodology and Tools
People use:
Define, Measure, Analyze and Control (DMAIC) and Plan, Do, Check Act (PDCA) to solve problems.
Value stream Mapping (VSM) is used to improve processes.
Top Management use:
Top Management must engage their people and get them invested in Lean initiatives.
Top Management and their people must be very disciplined daily.
Voice of the Employee (VoE) must be heard daily and ideas implemented.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) is used to obtain customers pros and cons of your company.
Based on this input, significant changes should be made to being value to the customer.
Last is Lean tools after you changed your culture;
- 6S: sort-set in order-shine-standardize-sustain (most important is to sustain change) and safety
- Kaizen or Daily Continuous Improvement
- Kanban or Pull Systems from the internal and external customer
- Lean Six Sigma: near zero defects quality
# Conclusions
Thanks to Charles for his contribution.
Again in this article it was focused how Lean Manufacturing and Lean Production is based on people and culture and then on Lean Tools.
The best way we know to create the culture is the morning meeting and I suggest you to see this video right now and start in your office to learn by doing.
