Register and get even more out of the maturity test: personalized best practice comparisons and recommendations!
Lean production, also called lean manufacturing, is an approach that eliminates everything that does not create value for a customer. It was developed by Toyota after the Second World War. In that corporation, it is called Toyota Production System (TPS). Lean is based on 14 basic principles:
1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
2. Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
3. Use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction.
4. Level out the workload (work like the tortoise, not the hare).
5. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.
6. Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
7. Use visual controls so no problems are hidden.
8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and process.
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.
13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly.
14. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement.
Working with continuous improvements, Kaizen in Japanese, is the basic view of Lean production, where no process is considered to be complete.
