Lean production
Lean production is an integrated socio-technical system whose main objective is to eliminate waste by concurrently reducing or minimizing supplier, customer, and internal variability .
Main lean principles were defined by Jeffrey K. Liker on the basis of Toyota experience and include the following:
1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
2. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
3. Use pull systems to avoid overproduction.
4. Level out the workload (heijunka).
5. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.
6. Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
7. Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.
9. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
10. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s philosophy.
11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.
12. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (genchi genbutsu).
13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement rapidly (nemawashi).
14. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen) .
⠀ Shah, R., Ward, P. T. (2007). Defining and developing measures of lean production. Journal of operations management, vol. 25, Pp. 785-805 (p. 791)
⠀ Liker, J. K. (2004). The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from theWorld’s Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill