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[INFOGRAPHIC] 5 Key Principles of Lean Manufacturing or Lean Thinking

This infographic illustrates the five key principles of lean manufacturing, also known as “lean thinking”. The concepts are broken down as follows:

1) Utilize the Voice of the Customer (VOC) tool to specify what is important to your customer. Use either direct contact or indirect contact with those customers.

  • Direct Contact: Interviews, surveys, focus groups or point of use observations
  • Indirect contact: Market trends, industry experts, market share changes

2) A value stream map will identify every step of the process from start to finish; every step performed in a process has to add value, or it is deleted. These maps give you a bird’s eye view.

  • Establish the product group
  • Establish the current flow
  • Observe and confirm processes
  • Map it out (create the stream value map)
  • Create the implementation plan

3) You can make the processes flow without interruption by removing any steps that do not add value. That is the genius of these charts; it makes viewing the processes easy so that you can delete or add a much needed step that would also add value.

4) Let the customer pull value from the product. The ideal process is one where every step is:

  • Valuable and the customer is willing to pay for it
  • Is capable of creating a superior product consistently

5) Make sure the steps in the processes:

  • Add value
  • Are free of variations
  • Practice constant improvements

So that perfection is achieved!

 

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