The Lean Toolbox 5th Edition.pdf
Rene Thivierge
This is the 6th edition of a book that has become a standard reference to Lean principles, systems, and tools. It is used by Lean practitioners and Industrial Engineers in the UK, USA, Ireland, Scandinavia, South Africa, and Australia. Like earlier editions, the book is written in plain language, with minimal padding, especially
The Lean toolbox has evolved considerably over the past four decades as lean has been applied to wide range of contexts beyond automotive manufacturing. What has remained constant throughout is the underlying philosophy, which is foundational knowledge all lean implementations should be based on.
The next step towards describing the Lean philosophy came with the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at MIT. The programme was based at MIT, but from the start the idea was to create an international network of faculty at other universities, with Dan Jones as UK team leader, Jim Womack, as research manager, and Dan Roos as programme director.
The programme was geared towards identifying what drove the Japanese competitive advantage. At the time a range of explanations were given. The most common explanations (and with hindsight, misperceptions) were:
Another MIT student, John Paul MacDuffie, also became involved in the programme at the time. MacDuffie was working as research assistant to Haruo Shimada from Keio University (a visiting professor at the Sloan School), who was interested in the Japanese transplants in the U.S., trying to understand how well they were able to transfer the Japanese human resource and production systems. Shimada was one of the first researchers allowed to visit and conduct interviews at the new transplants of Honda,
It is interesting to speculate on the change in the House between the two versions. One opinion, widely ignored, is that in early days Toyota suffered from quality and rework problems. Hence, Jidoka. These were largely solved. But if they are not solved, JIT flow will fail. A warning!
Over the past four decades, much has been written about JIT, Toyota Production System, and Lean. They make a formidable list! In this chapter we present the foundations for understanding the Lean Management System.
Moving towards perfection or true north is a repetitive process. Reducing the batch size moves you closer to the ideal, but you will need to come back and reduce it further. After you make the engine more fuel efficient, try it again then again and again. Perhaps change the engine type.
Likewise, Levitt maintained that Ford was not a production genius, but a marketing genius. His purpose was to make America, not only the rich, more mobile. He realised that if he could make and profitably sell a car for $500, millions of cars could be sold. That being the case, he had to find a way to make such a car.
Throughout Lean Thinking, Womack and Jones emphasized Lean Enterprise rather than Lean Manufacturing. In other words it was emphasising systems. But unfortunately the book became thought of as a manufacturing book, and the system message was missed.
One quickly realises that these five principles are not a sequential, one off procedure, but rather a journey of continuous improvement. Start out today. Again, in retrospect, what is remarkable is that the original five make no reference to people.
5.Process. Organise and think end-to-end process. Think horizontal, not vertical. Concentrate on the way the product or customer moves, not on machine utilisation or layers of decision. Map to understand the process.
6.Visuality. Seek to make all operations as visible and transparent as possible. Control by sight. Adopt the visual factory. Make it quick and easy to identify when operations or schedules are diverging.
11.Postponement. Delay activities and committing to product variety as late as possible so as to retain flexibility and to reduce waste and risk. This characteristic is closely associated with the concept of avoiding overproduction, but includes plant and equipment, information, and inventory. This is not the same as simply starting work at the last possible moment, but is about retaining flexibility at the right levels.
12.Prevention. Seek to prevent problems and waste, rather than to inspect and fix. Shift the emphasis from failure and appraisal to prevention. Inspecting the process, not the product, is prevention. Seek to prevent mistakes first through simplification, then mistake-proofing, and only then through inspection.
13.Time. Seek to reduce overall time to make, deliver, and to introduce new products. Use simultaneous, parallel, and overlapping processes in operations, design, and support services. Seek never to delay a value-adding step by a non value-adding step. Time is the best single overall measure. If time reduction is a priority you tend to do all the right things: reduce wastes, improve quality and customer service.
17.Gemba. Go to where the action is happening and seek the facts. Manage by direct observation. Implementation takes place on the floor, not in the office. Insist on Genshi Genbutsu (go see).
21.Participation. Give operators the first opportunity to solve problems. All employees should share responsibility for success and failure. True participation implies full information sharing.
23.Trust. If we truly believe in participation and cutting waste, we have to build trust. Trust allows great swathes of bureaucracy and time to be removed both internally and externally. In supply chains, Dyer has shown how trust has enabled Toyota to slash transaction costs (that represent as much as 30% of costs in a company). Building trust with suppliers gives them the confidence to make investments and share knowledge. Internally, trust allows a de-layered, streamlined, and more creative organisation. A Deming maxim is his 90/10 rule: 90% of problems lie with the system, only 10% with the people.
Value-added activity is something that the customer is prepared to pay for and involves a transformation. In some types of service, for example, health care and holidays, the customer is certainly prepared to pay for experience-enhancing activities so VA, NVA and NNVA designations require situational awareness.
Value is the converse of waste. Any organisation needs continually to improve the ratio of value adding to non-value adding activities. There are three ways: preventing waste, reducing waste, and by value enhancement.
hlstrm and Modig contrast Flow Efficiency with Resource Efficiency. As mentioned earlier, a unitary focus on Resource Efficiency would see idle resources as waste whilst ignoring the wastes that customers must endure. The medical doctor is the priority, not the patient. This would represent waste reduction as prioritised by the organisation not by the customer.
Before we go further, we should remember that Ohno was critical about categorization. Categorization may blind you to other opportunities. As an example, our late colleague VS Mahesh who was once a senior executive with Tata Hotels, tells of Masaaki Imai visiting the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. Imai told the management that a room with one of the best views in the hotel was used as a laundry. What a waste!
The waste of waiting is probably the second most important waste. It is directly relevant to FLOW. Waiting is the enemy of smooth flow In Lean we should be more concerned with flow of service or customers than we are with keeping operators busy.
Customers do not pay to have goods moved around unless they have hired a removal service! So any movement of materials is waste. It is a waste that can never be fully eliminated but it is also a waste that over time should be continually reduced. The number of transport and material handling operations is directly proportional to the likelihood of damage and deterioration. Double handling is a waste that affects productivity and quality.
Transporting is closely linked to communication. Where distances are long, communication is discouraged and quality may be the victim. Feedback on poor quality is inversely related to transportation length, whether in manufacturing or in services. There is increasingly the awareness that
b1e95dc632