Lean Management

A popular technique used to optimise processes and reduce waste in all areas of manufacturing

  • What is Lean Management?

    Lean Management is an approach to managing an organisation that stresses continuous improvement and systematically strives to improve processes by making small, incremental changes over a sustained period of time. 

    Waste is avoided at all costs during lean production to maximise time working in the warehouse, increase productivity, and reduce anything that doesn’t add value to the final customer. ‘Lean’ waste is outlined as follows: 

    • Defects (eg poor quality control or inaccurate stock levels)
    • Inventory waste (eg overproduction of goods, defects)
    • Excess processing (eg human error, or slow processes)
    • Wasted talent and skills (eg lack of team training)
    • Overproduction (eg lack of automation)
    • Wasted time (eg downtime of equipment or people
    • Transportation (eg bad warehouse layout, no dedicated areas)
    • Excess movement (eg materials far away from a workstation)

    The approach became popular during the 20th century, when manufacturing was no longer limited to a local or national scale. Companies needed a more efficient and clever way to work to keep up with demand, which is where lean manufacturing comes in.

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    If you’re looking to implement a Lean Management within your organisation, why not get advice from our team? We can help you create a bespoke lean system, perfectly tailored to your processes and procedures.

    At the core of Lean Visual Management is communication. With visual management, workers can obtain key information about their workplace ‘at a glance’ using instinctive visual cues. It is used to communicate any kind of information possible, but you will most commonly find it used to communicate expectations, performance information, guidelines, and warnings.

    A number of techniques are used to achieve lean management, which includes Kanban, the 5S method, visual management, and FIFO production, as these all work together to add as much value to the final product produced. In the pages linked, you will find more information on these methodologies and how you can implement them.

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What Are the Benefits of Lean Manufacturing?

Lean is one of the most popular manufacturing methods across the world, coming with a myriad of benefits. We’ve outlined just some of the reasons why you might want to implement lean manufacturing below:

  • Waste is minimised in many forms, which helps to decrease costs associated with the production process
  • Implements a safe working environment that is tidy and efficient, which means hazards can be spotted and rectified quickly
  • Free time is freed up within lean, which can be spent on R&D, customer service, or on further improving processes
  • Lean gives you a competitive advantage as it allows for business growth and quicker production times
  • Communication is increased between employees which can benefit employee satisfaction and encourages independent decision making

How Do You Implement Lean Management?

Implementing lean management is a long process, and there is never such a thing as being ‘finished’. We’ve outlined the five S’s of lean below, which can be helpful to follow when implementing the system within your own organisation.

Identifying Value

You first need to start with a good idea of your own products. Lean is all about adding value to your customer and getting rid of processes which don’t help with this. Think about the end goal, what is the price point of your product, what is the timeframe of manufacturing? Where could this be improved? During this stage, you should also think about your processes, and only keep those which add value. This may not be obvious for some stages of production, for example, QA (quality assurance) won’t directly add value to the product but it does add value to the organisaton as a whole as it ensures defects don’t slip through, potentially leading to an unhappy customer.

Map the Value Stream

Here is where you should make a visual plan of your processes. Remove any unnecessary and wasteful steps, and add value-adding steps where you see fit. Include anything from customer requests, to design, manufacturing, QA, and so on and so forth. In lean management, mapping is usually done with the help of Kanban boards and cards, which help give you and your team a visual overview of the production process.

Create a Continuous Flow

Once you have mapped out your processes, it is now time to ensure everything flows smoothly. Remember, waiting is seen as a big ‘waste’ in lean management. A Kanban board will be able to help you identify bottlenecks, and inefficient ways within your process. From your analysis, make changes to your processes, this could look like limiting the number of projects a team can be working on simultaneously. 

Establish a Pull System

You should get to a point in your process where work is triggered only by a customer request or when there is demand for it, you could think of this as the customer ‘pulling’ the product from you. A pull system helps to avoid overproduction – another form of waste – and means you’re only producing things of value to your customers. This is also called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing.

Continuous Improvement

Also known as Kaisen, creating a culture of continuous improvement will ensure processes stay productive and your organisation is always working towards perfection. Get your whole team involved with this final step, and give them the opportunity and space to freely make suggestions that will help to improve processes. Make the most of your team’s expertise, after all, they know your processes better than anyone!

Lean Management Systems From Orgatex

At Orgatex we are experts in Continuous Improvement, Visual Management & 5S solutions. We have been developing high-quality products to improve work processes for more than 50 years across a wide range of industrial, manufacturing, and logistic sectors.

In addition to our wide range of Lean products, such as our Long Life Floor Marking and Container Labelling, we also provide solutions to many problems encountered during the implementation of Lean & 5S programs for your workplace.

Explore Lean Management Products From Orgatex UK

If you have any questions about lean management and how it works, read our frequently asked questions below. If the question you have isn’t answered, please feel free to contact a member of our team, who will be happy to advise.

Lean Management FAQs

What is Visual Management in Lean?

Lean management relies on saving time by ensuring your team can process information ‘at a glance’. The visual management used in lean could come in the form of Kanban boards, which could give people an overview of project progress. Visual management can also be used in lean to explain processes easily and explain the purpose of a colour coded area in a warehouse.

What Are the Five Principles of Lean Management?

The lean management technique is based on five key principles to help achieve efficiency and effectiveness. The principles include identifying value, mapping the value stream, creating a flow, establishing pull, and continuous improvement.

What is Waste in Lean Management?

Waste is quite simple to understand in lean management – quite simply it means any steps in your manufacturing process that do not add value to the customer. ‘Waste’ as outlined in lean management comes in 8 forms: excess inventory, waiting, transportation, unnecessary movement (machines, people, etc), overproduction, defects, over processing, and not utilising skills. 

Waste in lean management is split into three groups Mura (waste from fluctuating demand), Muri (waste from burnout or overburden), and Muda (processes that add no value).

What is Kanban in Lean Manufacturing?

Kanban is a process management visual system indicating what to produce, when to produce it, and in what proportion. The system uses visual cards and boards to give employees a project overview, whilst encouraging them to move within the workflow. Kanban helps with lean manufacturing as it helps businesses streamline processes, increases motivation, and improves responsiveness as demand changes for products.

Find out more about the popular technique on our ‘Kanban’ page. On the page linked, our team discusses the benefits of Kanban boards and cards, as well as tells you what products you’ll need to implement the system within your own warehouse.

What Does 5S Mean in Lean Manufacturing?

The five S’s stand for sort (Seiri), set in order (Seiton), shine (Seiso), standardise (Seiketsu), and sustain (Shitsuke). This process focuses on decluttering and optimising the flow of your workspace for better productivity. Find out more about the 5S’s in one of our other methodology pages. On the page linked, we discuss the benefits of the technique, as well as answer commonly asked questions.

Who Invented Lean Manufacturing?

Closely related to just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, the lean manufacturing method was first mentioned in the book ‘The Machine That Changed the World (1991)’, written by Daniel Roos, James P. Womack, and Daniel T. Jones. They wrote the book based on their observations at Toyota.

Why Is Lean Management Important?

The main priority of lean management is to improve processes through organisation within the business, in order to optimise resources for efficient workflow and production. Properly utilising the lean management processes within your business can help improve waste reduction, improve efficiency and productivity all principles within a business that help improve value for the customer, something that is the heart of all business processes.

Why Is it Called Lean Manufacturing?

The name ‘lean manufacturing’ links to the aim of the process. By implementing lean processes you are aiming to reduce waste by removing anything from the manufacturing system that doesn’t add value to the production. So you are making it as ‘lean’ and as simple as possible.

What Is Kaizen In Lean Manufacturing?

Kaizen is seen as an essential part of lean manufacturing, it is the idea of implementing improvement processes that all members of the business can be involved with creating and doing, in order to eliminate waste and improve sustained production levels. 

The main stages of implementing kaizen in lean manufacturing are gathering employees and setting goals, reviewing your current performance and suggesting how you could improve this and implementing these improvements and measuring how these do and finally repeating this whole process to constantly be improving your approach.

Find More Lean Methods

Find More Lean Methods