Principles of Lean Manufacturing

Abstract

Lean manufacturing is a philosophy for continually eliminating waste. The practice of this philosophy requires both a management structure and a manufacturing technical structure that facilitate identifying wastes in the firm's operations, focuses management efforts on improving processes to reduce or eliminate any waste elements, and maintains the improvements through a focus on standards for all elements of manufacturing. This paper identifies the types of wastes in manufacturing. It then shows how lean manufacturing focuses on these wastes through employee involvement in continuous improvement of standards, visual management techniques to help identify wastes (deviations from standard), quality at the source techniques that focus on eliminating wastes of defects, and ‘pull’ production control methods that can be used to reduce wastes of inventory and to expose wastes hidden by high inventories.