Lean Manufacturing:
A systematic method for waste
minimization within manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity is
known as lean manufacturing or lean production. The waste created through
overburden and waste creates through unevenness in work loads are taken into
account. As per the perspective of a client who consumes a product or service,
‘value’ is any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay.
Lean manufacturing adds value to a
product thereby reducing everything else. The management philosophy is taken
from the Toyota Production System (TPS). In 1990s only it was identified as
lean. TPS is well known for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven
wastes to improve overall customer value but they can be best achieved as per
various perspectives.
Since years lean has developed a
number of names and has been primarily developed from the Toyota Production
System (TPS) and has been called World Class Manufacturing (WCM), Stock-less
production, Continuous Flow Manufacturing, etc. Today it is even known as Lean
Sigma and Agile Manufacturing.
Lean is actually developed within
manufacturing unit but it is equally applicable to office based administrative functions
or within service industries like healthcare. Some people have in mind that
lean means an organization which is not fit or is incapable of doing business
or an organization which can break under pressure.
Just in time:
Just-in-time (JIT) is a Japanese
management philosophy and refers to the production of goods to meet customer demand
in time, quality and quantity. The customer may be the final purchaser of the
product. JIT means to produce with minimum waste and is taken in its most
general sense including time and resources as well as materials. Some of the
elements in JIT include continuous improvement, eliminating waste, good
housekeeping, set-up time reduction, mixed production, etc. The concept of JIT
enables employees’ loyalty, fulfillment of company goals and low turnover
costs.
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| Source: Linkedin |
Lean Manufacturing vs Just in time
manufacturing
Just in time is a system and idea
with has seen wide acceptance within the business and manufacturing community.
When the competition is heated up between companies and the pressure from Asian
manufacturers’ continuous cultural improvement take toll on manufacturers. This
forces the firms to seek more innovative methods to reduce costs and cope with
the competition.
Tendency has been there to identify
or include JIT with Lean operations. Of course there are similarities between
the two; there are also some differences between the two methodologies. This
means that they play perfectly well together and there are many advantages of
using both methodologies at the same time.
In JIT methodology, the processes
exhibit some level of stability and consistency. Stability means decrease of
systematic errors in this case and the results gained must remain quite
consistent. This is not that easy to achieve at the beginning of Lean
initiative. The objective of JIT is to highlight all the problems in the
process. Lean focuses to eliminate the problems relating to the process so as
to increase production.
JIT has the fundamental component of
eliminating waste along with adding value. A firm must monitor series of
processes as target to minimize waste. Value is not added with things like
unreasonable waste times, exaggerated inventories, excess man power and unnecessary
movement of material or any other activity.
JIT alone is not effective to
eliminate waste completely as manufacturers realized that items were brought
only when they are needed and in required quantities is only one part. The need
of JIT to become Lean is always there. Lean has its own range of specific
procedures. The task of lean is to define a project that will be beneficial at
minimal costs. Lean’s focus is on manufacturing and operations management
whereas JIT focuses more on inventory management. The two methodologies share
some tools and all aim at creating value for the end user, the customer.
Generally, Lean tools are now often used to achieve JIT, such as the ‘flow’
based approach.
Summary:
To explicitly highlight process
problems is the role of JIT and Lean eliminates the problems.
Both methodologies is used to
eliminate waste and JIT alone cannot achieve this and hence there is a
transformation to Lean.
Lean is used to achieve JIT and the
two employ almost the same set of tools like error proofing.
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