Lean systems require an overall, as well as a minute, step-by-step analysis of how a company produces and delivers its goods or services to customers. This analysis reveals where there is waste. A continuous improvement approach to every step then eliminates that waste.

Among the key techniques to accomplish this goal are:

	Lean Manufacturing
	Value Stream Mapping
	Set up Reduction
	Total Productive Maintenance
	Pull Systems/Kanban
	Cellular Flow Manufacturing
	The 5S System
	Kaizen
	Lean Accounting & Performance Measures
	Lean Office

Lean Manufacturing:

Meet demand while increasing productivity and capacity.

Lean Manufacturing is a major business strategy that eliminates waste to decrease time between a customer order and shipment. If successfully implemented, it can make radical improvements in profitability, customer satisfaction, timeliness, employee morale and many other segments of a company. Following is the concept of Lean Manufacturing:

Matches production at each work station with customer demand. Links manual & mechanized operations into the most efficient combination that will maximize value added content, while minimizing waste, reduce cost through the process, with continued improvement, use multi-skilled workforce to increase production flexibility.

Make a study in your manufacturing plant, set a plan to implement Lean Manufacturing and assist you in the implementation. By doing this your company will:

	Reduce cycle time
	Reduce inventory
	Reduce costs
	Increase capacity
	Improve lead times
	Increase sales
	Increase productivity
	Improve quality
	Increase profits
	Increase employee satisfaction
	Increase customer satisfaction

Value Stream Mapping

Stop searching for the wrong problem, learn to see where value truly is.

Value Stream Mapping is a tool used to create a material and information flow map of a product or processes. This powerful tool allows companies to map the flow of products in the back door as raw material, through all manufacturing process steps, and off the loading dock as finished product. This is the Value Stream. You begin the journey with the current state map - it shows you where you are. Then, you plan you lean journey with a future state map - it shows you where you're going and how you're going to get there. based on your Value Stream Map, you can streamline work processes, thereby cutting lead times and reducing operating costs.

Benefits:

	"See the flow" of your value stream and wastes in the flow
	View all products from a system perspective
	Draw both material and information flows of your value stream
	Draw a blueprint for lean transformation - the Future State
	Prioritize activities needed to achieve the Future State

Set-up Reduction

Reducing the time required to change over from one processing operation to another.

Setup Reduction builds on the principles of Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) developed by Shigeo Shingo to help companies eliminate or reduce changeover time. This four step process strives at reducing lead times and lot sizes- a fundamental shift in how a company looks at setup. The historical view is that once a machine is "setup," it should keep producing as many parts as possible, building up inventory, which can cut into profit. With a new mind set - Set-up reduction will allow any company to:

	Respond to customer needs and schedules with more flexibility
	Improve on-time delivery
	Decrease costs due to excess inventor
	Increase line and machine capacity levels
	Increase changeover accuracy
	Reduce startup defects
	Increase profits

Set Up reduction allows for increased flexibility, reduction of inventory, and faster delivery- meeting customers demands for high quality, low cost products.
By working directly with your lean leaders we can provide for a Kaisen event link to a one day workshop. In the workshop your team will learn the principles of Set-up reduction and the Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) and then apply the four step Changeover Improvement process to achieve setup reduction in a lifelike simulation exercise.




Total Productive Maintenance

Boost capacity and improve quality by increasing your equipment life expectancy.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a process to maximize the productivity of your equipment for its entire life. In any manufacturing environment machine downtime becomes an intolerable situation, requiring a different approach to its maintenance. The benefits of Total Preventive Maintenance come when companies transition from a fire-fighting mode of fixing one sudden breakdown after another to preventing those breakdowns.

The goal of TPM is to maximize your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and to reduce downtime to zero while improving quality and capacity. We use a process to help companies achieve this by transferring and sharing skills between the machine operator and maintenance people. Since operators are the closest to the machines, they are included in maintenance and monitoring activities in order to prevent and provide warning of malfunctions. At the same time, maintenance people learn from the machine operator how to setup, run production, and shutdown the machine.

Typical benefits of implementing TPM are:

	Overall equipment effectiveness improvement 25-65%
	Quality improvements 25-50%
	Maintenance expenditures reductions 10-50%
	Planned vs. unplanned maintenance increase 10-60%
	Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and how it relates to capacity.
	The tenfold effect of 5S techniques when applied to your equipment, the six major equipment related losses.
	How to find and eliminate them the causes of 75% of equipment breakdowns.

Pull Systems /Kanban

Improve your cash flow, throughput and competitive position.

Pull Systems control the flow of resources in a production process by replacing only what has been consumed. They are customer order-driven production schedules based on actually demand and consumption rather than forecasting. Implementing Pull Systems can help you eliminate waste in handling, storing and getting your product to the customer on time, every time.

Benefits:

	Reduce overall inventory
	Reduce work in process
	Reduce order turnaround time
	Increase customer satisfaction
	Improve cash flow

Cellular Flow Manufacturing

Slash lead times and increase productivity by improving product flow.

When processes are balanced, the product flows continuously and customer demands are easily met. Cellular/Flow Manufacturing is the linking of manual and machine operations into the most efficient combination of resources to maximize value-added content while minimizing waste. The most efficient combination implies the concept of process balancing. Only in a balanced process will the product continually flow. As a result, parts movement is minimized, wait time between operations is reduced, inventory is reduced and productivity increases.

Benefits:

	Maximize value added by each worker
	Minimize part movement and inventory
	Reduce lead times, cycle times and waiting times
	Increase productivity and quality performance
	Free up floor space
	Improve efficiency of cross-training workers
	Increase communication
	Increase flexibility

5S System

Accelerate product and service flow- achieve and sustain clean, safe and organized workplaces.

The 5S System is a series of activities designed to improve workplace organization and standardization. These five activities, all of which begin with the letter S, include:

	Sort through all items and remove unneeded items
	Set in order remaining items, set limits, create temporary location indicators
	Shine or clean everything and use cleaning as inspection
	Standardize the first three S's by implementing visual displays and controls
	Sustain the gains through self-discipline, training, communication and total employee involvement

Benefits:

	Improve quality
	Achieve work standardization
	Decrease changeover time
	Improve safety
	Reduce storage costs
	Reduce cycle time
	Reduce machine down time
	Boost employee morale as well as work environment

Kaizen

Involve your workforce in the pursuit of eliminating waste.

Kaizen is an intensive and focused approach to process improvement. Kaizen means “continuous improvement”. This continuous improvement methodology combines lean manufacturing tools. Kaizen has been used extensively for improving the organization of work in factories and actual methods used to manufacture products. The results are real-time with implementation occurring within one week. Not only will you see immediate improvement to your process, you will also develop a list of other improvement opportunities that your staff can investigate and implement.

Benefits:

	Immediate results
	Involvement of the workforce
	Visual, action orientation
	Can use ongoing, once-learned concepts
	Fosters communication

Lean Accounting & Performance Measures

If you’re implementing lean manufacturing, chances are you’ve already felt the need for Lean Accounting Performance Measures.

Lean Accounting reflects the progress of your Lean Enterprise Transformation efforts It focuses the company’s efforts on increasing throughput, decreasing inventories and decreasing operating costs. A crucial step is selecting measures that are focused on physical attributes, such as output and cycle time, as opposed to traditional financial measures. Lean Accounting is the pursuit of eliminating the waste in information flow.

Each step in the process from the receipt of request to order fulfillment, accounts payable, accounts receivable ,general ledger, material replenishment are subject to scrutiny.

Benefits:

	Value Streams metrics (box-scores) must be in-place.
	Product costing is not based on standard costs or inventories.
	Profit and loss is defined by Value Streams.

Lean Office

Collect payment from your customers faster by shortening your order-to-cash time.

Lean office helps companies with any type of administrative function to streamline information flow- the gathering, improving, movement and storage of information.
 
Just like lean for the factory floor, Lean office focuses on reducing total cycle time, in this case the time between orders being placed and when payments are received.

Benefits:

	Reduce paperwork process time up to 90%
	Improve on-time performance up to 90%
	Reduce work in process up to 90%
	Reduce errors up to 50%
	Reduce floor space up to 75%