You may be wondering, how does lean manufacturing figure into the precision manufacturing industry?
In short, lean manufacturing reduces work and costs while maintaining quality.
Lean manufacturing is based in the concept of reducing waste, decreasing costs and improving quality.
When lean methodologies and principles are followed wasted effort, time and materials are all focused upon and eliminated.
Identifying non-productive actions and placing an emphasis on actions that create value is at the essence of lean methodology and lean production.
Lean Manufacturing Definition
Taken from the infographic titled: A Visual Explanation of Lean Manufacturing
Lean Manufacturing is reducing work and costs while maintaining quality. Lean Management philosophies also focus on continually improving the workplace based on Toyota’s principle of “respect for humanity.”
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What is the definition of Kaizen?
Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization’s long-term competitive strategy.Kaizen Institute
Value Stream Mapping: How Does it Relate to Lean?
Value stream mapping is a lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer. At Toyota, it is known as “material and information flow mapping”. It can be applied to nearly any value chain.Wikipedia
Lean is about Supply Chain Management and Eliminating Waste
Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services. It includes the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. Interconnected or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses are involved in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain. Supply chain management has been defined as the “design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally.”Wikipedia
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