Overall equipment effectiveness (or OEE) measures how much planned productive time is actually productive. Facilitating clear collaboration and communication.Enabling culture change within an organization.Encouraging continuous improvement in processes.Value stream mapping can be applied to your organization by methods such as: This principle takes all the people, processes, information and inventory necessary, and displays them in a flow chart in order to get an overview of the business. Value stream mapping is used in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, finance and healthcare. Organizations use it to create a visual guide of all the components necessary to deliver a product or service with the goal of analyzing and optimizing the entire process. Value stream mapping is a technique developed from Lean manufacturing. If a critical supplier has to suspend operations, for example, it’s important to have a backup plan to ensure that the final product can still be developed. Organizations in sectors like manufacturing should carefully evaluate their supply chains and minimize the potential for disruption when implementing JIT. Digital distribution for media products has also helped to minimize the costs associated with excess materials. JIT can be an effective framework for managing inventory, but it can also make it more difficult to meet customer demand if there is a breakdown in the supply chain.Īs an example, the self-publishing sector often uses this model, only printing books as they are ordered. Professionals who use Lean principles should consider JIT if their business is capable of working on-demand and can minimize the risk of only carrying inventory as needed. This means that companies do not have to stock up on unnecessary inventory, lowering the risk of some components or products being overstocked or damaged while being stored. Just-in-time manufacturing is an on-demand system that allows manufacturers to go into production only after the customer has requested a product. For example, bottlenecks caused by inefficient processes can be fixed through streamlining and improving those processes if it is instead caused by a lack of resources, you may need to hire more people or purchase technology to make your existing resources go further. Depending on the type of bottleneck, there are several things you can do to address it.

Utilizing Lean practices to spot and rectify a bottleneck saves companies time, energy and money. Bottleneck analysis is also used to address both present and future issues, by identifying and addressing operational and process challenges. How many times have your projects gotten stuck somewhere between development and delivery? Bottleneck analysis is a structured way of looking at the processes and workflows for developing a product or service. Lean Tools and Their Applications Bottleneck Analysis Though there are several different types of Lean tools, this article will focus on seven of them, and how they can be applied. When used together, the two are referred to as Lean Six Sigma, a process that reduces and manages different types of waste in organizations. Though there are some differences between the two frameworks, the underlying philosophies behind Lean and Six Sigma complement each other exceptionally well: Lean tools are designed to eliminate invaluable processes, while Six Sigma focuses on lessening variation within a process. Lean tools are utilized across many industries-from manufacturing to engineering to finance- and organizations often leverage them together with Six Sigma methods.

In other words, Lean tools seek to eliminate processes that aren’t valuable. The Japanese word for waste is muda, which is defined as “uselessness.” Lean tools are designed to reduce Muda in organizations and improve quality control. In this article, we’ll explore what Lean tools are and discuss the applications for seven common ones that you’ll encounter in Lean Six Sigma. In addition to being the first to correctly implement the Lean tool Just-In-Time, for example, Toyota is also known for creating its own Lean Production System. Lean methodology also has an expansive legacy outside the U.S., with companies such as Toyota making considerable breakthroughs in the application of Lean Tools throughout the 1930s. Lean tools got their start in America as early as the 1900s, when Henry Ford used Lean methodology to create the Model T assembly line. If you’ve heard some buzz about Lean tools and principles, you’re not alone.

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