Purpose

The purpose of lean is to eliminate wasteful practices while delivering increased value to the customer. These principles are simple to apply but require vision, full employee participation, relentless attention to detail, expertise, and experience. Although knowledge of the lean tools and techniques is important a strategy for their deployment and partnering with those who have experience is critical. 

Lean Manufacturing Systems provides a practical approach to applying Lean principles and objectives to your business. Based on the philosophy and principles of TPS (Toyota Production System) and the Sensei-Coaching approach, we aim to ensure your organisation will get the maximum out of this partnership by building relationships and influence people from operator level up to the most senior leaders.

The intent is to not only help your organisation solve the issues at hand but to provide knowledge and create lean systems that will build on the success achieved so that together we create a lasting continuous improvement culture within your organisation.

With this in mind, we will take the time to understand your requirements so that we can develop a plan which will cover the importance of areas and projects that will achieve a high Return on Investment for your organisation.

We will focus on results that:

• Provide long term-value to your company.
• Strengthen your systems to improve your competitive position.
• Foster strong employee engagement to improve your performance, service, quality and ultimately your bottom line.
• Ensure that your business goals are achieved.

“Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the faint-hearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment"

W. Edwards Deming

Process

We must understand that value is added only when we are performing work that the customer is willing to pay for. Waste means adding cost, but not adding value. Customers do not pay for waste -- you do.

The crucial factor in getting started on implementing Lean is acquiring the skills to do so. Training is the most effective and efficient way to do this. How employees, managers, executives are trained, and how to secure adoption within the company to ensure long-term adhesion to the new direction is critical. Properly implemented tools of Lean yield powerful results.

Lean Manufacturing Systems focus on training your people on the lean tools necessary to accomplish the goals of your company. We will work with your company to customise a solution or implementation plan that fits with your immediate goals, budget, and resources. Assessment through Value Stream Mapping typically offers the greatest insight into organisational challenges and opportunities with real and current information.

Excellence is the result of the process that we pursue – it is not in and of itself the end game.

People

Respect is the core principle of all successful lean enterprises and should apply to both customers and everyone within the company.

Respect for customers: Lean enterprises are designed to maximise customer value while minimising waste out of respect for the customer. In a lean enterprise, people understand the customers' true demand in price, delivery, and quality, not just what can be delivered.

Respect for employees: Out of respect for employees, a lean enterprise encourages environments where everyone can achieve their maximum potential. Strengthening capabilities at the level of the firm is highly dependent on peoples’ capabilities, skills, and attitude. In a lean enterprise, team members continuously strive to optimise processes to allow everyone to deliver the most value they can provide.

At Lean Manufacturing Systems we believe passionately in inspiring workers to believe in themselves and their capabilities for doing things that they never thought they could do. We have learned from experience that it is important to strive toward perfection in a patient, step-by-step manner, allowing time for people to comprehend the upcoming changes in thinking and daily routine that are being asked of them. We coach people so they understand the necessity (why) for adopting lean practices in order to be more effective at work. Once people acquire the skills and capabilities, they develop an emotional connection to why we need to adopt lean practices to improve our work.

“It is disrespectful to not allow people the opportunity to solve their own problems or use their own thinking...” 

Davis Meier, at Northeast Shingo Prize Conference, 2010

Performance

Performance begins with purposes and objectives. Performance cannot be managed if the organisations' purpose and objectives are not clearly stated and understood by all employees. Without clear objectives, a business is likely to have inefficient operations as it is difficult for employees to perform productive and coordinated tasks daily without a clear sense of the purpose of their actions.

 However, having clearly stated purpose and objectives alone is not sufficient but requires the necessary action that would assist in achieving these goals. Measures must be created and monitored to drive results. Having a complete, accurate and well-defined set of measures is a critical tool in achieving alignment between requirements and performance.

Lean Manufacturing Systems will work with the leadership across the various levels of your company in identifying the right metrics and targets that will prioritise, assign and track improvement opportunities from the site level down to the production cell level. Underlying the old truism that what gets measured gets done, we will work on the development of a system that focuses on driving continuous improvement by monitoring the right metrics at the right time intervals with the participation of all the people involved. The people involved, the metrics tracked, and the frequency of the process will vary depending on the level being monitored. However, the success of the team’s performance, regardless of the level, depends on the following critical components:

1. Defining the right metrics and targets
2. Creating a simple, intuitive, and highly visible Performance Board that can be easily maintained
3. Holding effective team review meetings
4. Establishing the right frequency for the meetings

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high, and we miss it, but that it is too low, and we reach it”  

Michelangelo