Lean Tools

5S
Japanese Term American Term Definition
Seiri Sort Sort through materials, keeping only the essential
items needed to complete tasks. (This action
involves going through all the contents of a
workspace to determine which are needed and
which can be removed. Everything that is not used
to complete a work process should leave the work
area.)
Seiton Set in Order Ensure that all items are organized and each item
has a designated place. Organize all the items left
in the workplace in a logical way so they make
tasks easier for workers to complete. This often
involves placing items in ergonomic locations
where people will not need to bend or make extra
movements to reach them.
Seiso Shine Proactive efforts to keep workplace areas clean
and orderly to ensure purpose-driven work. This
means cleaning and maintaining the newly
organized workspace. It can involve routine tasks
such as mopping, dusting, etc. or performing
maintenance on machinery, tools, and other
equipment.
Seiketsu Standerdize Create a set of standards for both organization and
processes. In essence, this is where you take the
first three S's and make rules for how and when
these tasks will be performed. These standards can
involve schedules, charts, lists, etc.
Shitsuke Sustain Sustain new practices and conduct
audits to maintain discipline. This means the
previous four S's must be continued over time.
This is achieved by developing a sense of self-
discipline in employees who will participate in 5S.

Value Stream Mapping

Value-stream mapping, also known as "material- and information-flow mapping" is a lean-
management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of
events that take a product or service from the beginning of the specific process until it reaches
the customer. A value stream map is a visual tool that displays all critical steps in a specific
process and easily quantifies the time and volume taken at each stage. Value stream maps show
the flow of both materials and information as they progress through the process.
Standardized Work
Standardized work is one of the key components of a Just-in-Time production system. ...
Standardized work refers to the systematic determination and documentation of work element
sequence and process for each operation. The objective is to clearly communicate to the operator
exactly how the job should be performed
Load Leveling
Load leveling usually involves storing power during periods of light loading on the system and
delivering it during periods of high demand. During these periods of high demand, the energy
storage system supplies power, reducing the load on less economical peak-generating facilities.
Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning "change for the better" or "continuous improvement." It is a
Japanese business philosophy regarding the processes that continuously improve operations and
involve all employees. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical
process.
The concept of kaizen encompasses a wide range of ideas. It involves making the work
environment more efficient and effective by creating a team atmosphere, improving everyday
procedures, ensuring employee engagement, and making a job more fulfilling, less tiring, and
safer.
Kanban
Kanban is a workflow management method for defining, managing and improving services that
deliver knowledge work. It aims to help you visualize your work, maximize efficiency, and
improve continuously.
Originating from manufacturing, it later became a territory claimed by Agile software
development teams. Recently, it started getting recognized by business units across various
industries.
Visual Workplace
The visual workplace is a continuous improvement paradigm that is closely related to lean
manufacturing, the Toyota Production System, and operational excellence yet offers its own
comprehensive methodology that aims for significant financial and cultural improvement gains.
Quick Changeover
Streamlining changeover is a critical method to reduce scrap and improve efficiency. Quick
Changeover, also referred to as SMED, is a lean manufacturing technique that can help you
improve your converting efficiency.
Andon
In manufacturing, the term andon refers to a system which notifies managerial, maintenance, and
other workers of a quality or processing problem. The alert can be activated manually by a
worker using a pullcord or button or may be activated automatically by the production equipment
itself.
Poka-yoke
Poka-yoke is a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing" or "inadvertent error prevention". A
poka-yoke is any mechanism in a process that helps an equipment operator avoid mistakes and
defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.
One-piece flow
One-piece flow, sometimes called continuous flow or single-piece flow, is a production method
used instead of traditional mass production. In mass production, materials move through the
manufacturing process in batches which can be highly inefficient. In one-piece flow, a product is
completed before the next one is started typically used in Lean organizations and will help
businesses achieve Just-in-Time production.

Cellular Manufacturing
Cellular manufacturing is a process of manufacturing which is a subsection of just-in-time
manufacturing and lean manufacturing encompassing group technology. The goal of cellular
manufacturing is to move as quickly as possible, make a wide variety of similar products, while
making as little waste as possible.

14 Working Principles of Lean Toyota Production System (TPS)

Principle 1: Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of
short-term financial goals.
Have a philosophical sense of purpose that supersedes any short-term decision making. Work,
grow and align the whole organization toward a common purpose that is bigger than making
money. Understand your place in the history of the company and work to bring the company to
next level. Your philosophical mission is the foundation for the other principles.
Generate value of the customer, society and the economy – it is your starting point. Evaluate
every function in the company in terms of ability to achieve this.
Be responsible. Strive to decide your own fate. Act with self-reliance and trust in your own
abilities. Accept responsibility for your own conduct and maintain improve the skills that enable
you to produce added value.
Principle 2: Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
Redesign work process to achieve high value-added, continuous flow. Strive to cut back to zero
the amount of the time that any work project is sitting idle or waiting for someone to work on it.
Create flow to move material and information fast as well as to link processes and people
together so that problems surface right way.
Make flow evident throughout your organizational culture. It is the key to a true continuous
improvement process and to developing people.
Provide your downline customers in production process with what they want, when they want it
and in the amount they want it. Material replenishment initiated by consumption in the basic
principle of just-in-time.
Minimize your work in process and warehousing of inventory by stocking small amounts of each
product and frequently restocking based on what the customer actually takes away.
Be responsive to the day-by-day shifts in customer demand rather than relying on computer
schedules and systems to track wasteful inventory.

Principle 3: Use “Pull” system to avoid overproduction.

Provide your downline customers in production process with what they want, when they want it
and in the amount they want it. Material replenishment initiated by consumption in the basic
principle of just-in-time.
Minimize your work in process and warehousing of inventory by stocking small amounts of each
product and frequently restocking based on what the customer actually takes away.
Be responsive to the day-by-day shifts in customer demand rather than relying on computer
schedules and systems to track wasteful inventory.

Principle 4: Level out the workload (heijunka). (“Work like a tortoise, not the hare”).
Eliminating waste is just one-third of the equation for making lean successful. Eliminating
overburden to people, equipment and eliminating unevenness in the production schedule is just
as important – yet generally not understood at companies attempting to implement lean
principles.
Work to level out the workload of all manufacturing and service processes as an alternative to
the start/stop approach of working on projects in batches that is typical at most companies.

Principle 5: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right at the first time.
Quality of the customer drives your value proposition
Use all the modern quality assurance methods available
Build into your equipment the capability of detecting problems and stopping itself. Develop a
visual system to alert team or project leaders that a machine or process needs assistance. Jidoka
(machines with human intelligence) is the foundation for “building in” quality.
Build into your organization support systems to quickly solve the problems and put in place
countermeasures.
Build into your culture the philosophy of stopping or slowing down to get quality right the first
time to enhance productivity in the long run.
Principle 6: Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvements and employee
empowerment.
Use stable, repeatable methods everywhere to maintain the predictability, regular timing and
regular output of your processes. It is the foundation for the flow and pull.
Capture the accumulated learning about a process up to a point in time by standardizing today’s
best practices. Allow creative and individual expression to improve upon the standard; then
incorporate it into the new standard so that when a person moves on you can hand off the
learning to the next person.

Principle 7: Use Visual Control so no problems are hidden.

Use simple visual indicators to help people determine immediately whether they are in standard
condition or deviating from it.
Avoid using a computer screen when it moves the worker’s focus away from the workplace.
Design simple visual system at the workplace where the work is done, to support flow and pull.
Reduce your reports to one piece of paper whenever possible, even for your most important
financial decisions.

Principle 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that servers your people and
process.
Use technology to support people not to replace people. Often it is best to work out process
manually before adding technology to support the people.
New technology is often unreliable and difficult to standardize and therefore endangers “flow”.
A proven process that works generally takes precedence over new and untested technology.
Conduct actual tests before adopting new technology in business processes, manufacturing
systems or products.
Reject or modify technologies that conflict with your culture or that might disrupt stability,
reliability and predictability.
Nevertheless encourage your people to consider new technologies when looking into new
approaches to work. Quickly implement a thoroughly considered technology if it has been
proven in trials and it can improve flow in your processes.
Principle 9: Grow leaders who thoroughly understands the work, live philosophy and teach it to
others.
Grow leaders within, rather than buying them from outside the organization.
Do not view the leader’s job as simply accomplishing tasks and having good people skills.
Leaders must be role models for the company’s philosophy and the way of doing business.
A leader must understand the daily work in great detail so that he or she can be a best teacher of
your company’s philosophy.
Principle 10: Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s philosophy.
Create a strange, stable culture in which company values and beliefs are widely shared and lived
out over a period of many years.
Train exceptional individuals and teams to work within the corporate philosophy to achieve
exceptional results. Work hard to reinforce the culture continually.
Use Cross functional teams to improve quality and productivity and enhance flow by solving
difficult technical problems. Empowerment occurs only when people use the company’s tools to
improve company.
Make an ongoing effort to teach individuals how to work together as teams together toward
common goals. Team work is something that has to be learned.

Principle 11: Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and
helping them improve.
Have respect for your partners and suppliers and treat them as an extension of your business.
Challenge your outside business partners to grow and develop. It shows that you value them. Set
challenging targets and assists your partners in achieving them.

Principle 12: Go to gemba and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi
Genbutsu).
Solve problems and improve processes by going to the source and personally observing and
verifying data rather than theorizing on the basis of what other people or the computer screen tell
you.
Think and speak based on personally verified data.
Even high-level managers and executives should go and see things for themselves, so they will
have more than a superficial understanding of the situation.

Principle 13: Make decision slowly by consensus (use cross functional teams), thoroughly
considering all options; implement decisions rapidly.
Do not pick a single direction and go down that one path until you have thoroughly considered
alternatives.
Nemawashi is the process of discussing problems and potential solutions with all of those
affected, to collect their ideas and get agreement on a path forward. This consensus process,
though time – consuming, helps broaden the search for solutions, and once a decision is made,
the stage is set for rapid implementation.
Once you have established a stable process, use continuous improvement tools to determine the
root cause of inefficiencies and apply effective countermeasures.
Design processes that requires almost no inventory. This will make wasted time and resources
visible for all to see. Once waste is exposed, have employees use a continuous improvement
process (kaizen) to eliminate it.
Protect the organizational knowledge base by developing stable personnel, slow promotion and
very careful succession systems.

Principle 14: Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and
continuous improvements (Kaizen).

Applications
1. Utilizing Lean practices to spot and rectify a bottleneck saves companies time, energy
and money. Depending on the type of bottleneck, there are several things you can do to
address it. For example, bottlenecks caused by inefficient processes can be fixed through
streamlining and improving those processes; if it is instead caused by a lack of resources,
you may need to hire more people or purchase technology to make your existing
resources go further.
2. Professionals who use Lean principles should consider JIT if their business is capable of
working on-demand and can minimize the risk of only carrying inventory as needed. JIT
can be an effective framework for managing inventory, but it can also make it more
difficult to meet customer demand if there is a breakdown in the supply chain.
 As an example, the self-publishing sector often uses this model, only printing books as
they are ordered. Digital distribution for media products has also helped to minimize the
costs associated with excess materials. Organizations in sectors like manufacturing
should carefully evaluate their supply chains and minimize the potential for disruption
when implementing JIT. If a critical supplier has to suspend operations, for example, it’s
important to have a backup plan to ensure that the final product can still be developed.
3. Value stream mapping can be applied to your organization by methods such as;
 Encouraging continuous improvement in processes.
 Enabling culture change within an organization.
 Facilitating clear collaboration and communication.
4. Companies apply OEE in order to increase production effectiveness and perform
effectively and efficiently by establishing accurate baselines of performance—while still
maintaining quality standards. This efficiency saves companies money and time.
5. Lockheed Martin used PDCA to create a more efficient process in material management.
One of its award-winning achievements was its ability to reduce the time to move parts
from the receiving department to the stock department. Initially, this process took 30
days, but the entire process was shortened to four hours.
6. There are a few steps companies can take to successfully implement root cause analysis:
 Recognize the issue you are trying to solve.
 Learn details about how long the problem has been going on, and how it is
specifically affecting your process/business.
 Collect data about the problem, and try to identify as many potential causes as
possible.
 Once you have data, decide what the source of the problem is.
 Decide how to lessen the chances of the problem happening again.

Advantages of Lean production

1. Less Infrastructure:
A manufacturer implementing lean production only uses the building space,
equipment, tools, supplies and manpower necessary to meet near-term inventory
demand from buyers. In contrast to mass production facilities, a building used with a
lean production strategy doesn't have any wasted space. Only the room necessary to
meet demand is required. Similarly, the business doesn't need unused equipment and
tools sitting around. Labor shifts are also scheduled to ensure workers don't stand
around without work to do.
 1. Limited Waste :
The goal of limited waste is a key focus of lean manufacturing relative to mass production.
Companies don't want excess inventory sitting around waiting for customers to want it. This
approach eliminates dated or obsolete inventory and the risk that certain items perish or
expire. Eliminating waste is cost-effective. It is not necessary to have space or people to
manage the extra inventory until it is purchased.

2. Strong Customer Relationships :

Lean production is an efficient approach to customer relationships. Unlike mass production,
which attempts to meet the needs of all customers when demand occurs, lean production
involves meeting the needs of loyal customers on a scheduled or predictable basis. Keeping
your best customers happy and in good supply contributes to limited waste, while ensuring
that your cash cow customers feel important to your business. It is also easier to customize
products or flex production processes when you cater to select buyers.

Worker Satisfaction

Implementing lean principles in your company requires input and participation from your production
staff. They are often in the best place to see where waste and inefficiency occurs. Not only do they
serve as a resource for you, employees usually respond in a positive way to sincere efforts to involve
them in improvement processes. When they see suggestions and ideas incorporated, a sense of
ownership and satisfaction about their contribution is more likely to follow.

Just in Time

JIT is a strategy that suggests large inventories are wasteful of company resources. Business
equity tied up in inventories of raw and finished goods interferes with cash flow. Money is also
saved through reduced warehousing needs. The perfect JIT scenario would have the raw
materials purchased and delivered at the moment production needs them, and the finished
product is sold and delivered the moment it comes off the line. While this scenario may be
impossible, lean philosophy suggests making improvements toward the ideal.
Competitive Advantage

Beyond simply reducing costs and improving efficiency, lean production techniques introduce
systems and develop skills with your staff that support changes in the workplace that new sales
create. Space saved on warehousing may be used to add new product lines. The same is true of
time savings. Your staff can absorb new work and react quickly to changes in client demand.
Producing work quickly, in short iterations, without waste and delivered on time enhances your
advantage over your competition.

Disadvantages of Lean Production

3. Equipment or Labor Failure :
One of the central disadvantages of lean production is that you have little margin for error. If
equipment breaks down or you need more-than-projected labor for certain processes, you may
fall behind and lose your optimized efficiency advantages. In a mass production plant,
workers simply slide over to another piece of equipment if something quits working. In a lean
production facility, there aren't a lot of extra equipment and tools around.

Missed Deliveries
Directly tied to the lack of flexibility or margin for error is the potential for missed delivery
deadlines. Breakdowns can cause you to harm your primary customer relationships if you
don't deliver as promised. Your wholesale or retail buyers need goods by deadlines to meet
the demand from their customers. If you consistently fail to provide timely shipments, buyers
look for suppliers that can. Sometimes, you don't even get a second chance on a major miss.

New Inefficiencies

Lean techniques can be overused. When tracking of productivity and waste starts to impact the
time used for production, the solution becomes the problem. When lean principles are first
applied, you can expect larger returns than later down the road. It is tempting to push those
expectations, but you must examine the value of improvements. If you refine throughput to
1,000 parts an hour in one section that you can supply with only 500 parts from a previous
stage, you haven't improved your result.
Low Margin for Error

JIT principles work best with stable system components. Delivery times for raw and finished
goods are known, and the elements of production can be scheduled accordingly. Being overly
aggressive with JIT scheduling leaves you vulnerable to systemic bottlenecks. Supplier
delivery issues may cut off your raw materials, interrupting your production flow. Maintenance
emergencies can reduce your production throughput. Any constraint not accounted for in your
JIT planning potentially jeopardizes the entire system. Margin for error and system waste may
be difficult to balance.