[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!