5 Lean Principles Every Engineer Should Know

Unless an engineer is directly involved in manufacturing, he or she may only be slightly familiar with “lean” principles. Long considered a way to greatly improve manufacturing efficiency, lean can be applied to any business or production process, in any industry. For example, lean is now being used extensively in the healthcare industry to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The principles can even be used, on a smaller scale, to organize your office, workspace, or laboratory.

The goal of lean is to eliminate waste—the non-value-added components in any process. Unless a process has gone through lean multiple times, it contains some element of waste. When done correctly, lean can create huge improvements in efficiency, cycle time, productivity, material costs, and scrap, leading to lower costs and improved competitiveness. And remember, lean isn’t restricted to manufacturing. It can improve how a team works together, inventory management, and even client interaction.

1. Value. Value is always defined by the customer’s needs for a specific product. For example, what is the timeline for manufacturing and delivery? What is the price point? What are other important requirements or expectations that must be met? This information is vital for defining value.

2. Value stream. Once the value (end goal) has been determined, the next step is mapping the “value stream,” or all the steps and processes involved in taking a specific product from raw materials and delivering the final product to the customer. Value-stream mapping is a simple but eye-opening experience that identifies all the actions that take a product or service through any process. That process can be in design, production, procurement, HR, administration, delivery, or customer service. The idea is to draw, on one page, a "map" of the flow of material/product through the process. The goal is to identify every step that does not create value and then find ways to eliminate those wasteful steps. Value-stream mapping is sometimes referred to as process re-engineering. Ultimately this exercise also results in a better understanding of the entire business operation.

3. Flow. After the waste has been removed from the value stream, the next step is to be sure the remaining steps flow smoothly with no interruptions, delays, or bottlenecks. “Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so that the product or service will flow smoothly toward the customer,” advises LEI. This may require breaking down silo thinking and making the effort to become cross-functional across all departments, which can be one of the greatest challenges for lean programs to overcome. However, studies show that this will also lead to huge gains in productivity and efficiency, sometimes as high as 50-percent improvement or more.

4. Pull. With improved flow, time to market (or time to customer) can be dramatically improved. This makes it much easier to deliver products as needed, as in “just in time” manufacturing or delivery. This means the customer can “pull” the product from you as needed (often in weeks, instead of months). As a result, products don’t need to be built in advance or materials stockpiled, creating expensive inventory that needs to be managed, saving money for both the manufacturer/provider and the customer.
5. Perfection. Accomplishing Steps 1-4 is a great start, but the fifth step is perhaps the most important: making lean thinking and process improvement part of your corporate culture. As gains continue to pile up, it is important to remember lean is not a static system and requires constant effort and vigilance to perfect. Every employee should be involved in implementing lean. Lean experts often say that a process is not truly lean until it has been through value-stream mapping at least half a dozen times.

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