Refining the Process: Tools for Solving Problems In Lean Manufacturing

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Lean manufacturers everywhere strive to balance compliance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. These solutions have been found to enable manufacturers to achieve all three without sacrificing the quality of their products.

Lean manufacturing, aimed at trimming unnecessary costs and maximizing efficiency, represents the ideal of most businesses. This process uses both high tech and low tech tools for refining problems in a lean manufacturing setting.

Kanban Boards Chart Production Flow

Today numerous software companies vie to produce the best Kanban boards to enable manufacturers and software developers to chart production on a comprehensive scale. By keeping all the members of a team alerted to issues that impact production flows, a company may avoid expensive mistakes in scheduling distribution and marketing events.

Collaborative Software For Inclusive Conferencing

Another hot topic for enterprise software development these days concerns collaborative software and hardware to facilitate group work across remote locations. This need reflects the dispersion of many international firms. A modern manufacturer might locate a factory in one country, corporate headquarters in another, and sales representatives in a third nation. Instead of physically transporting all the managers involved to a meeting, asking them to collaborate on work using software often produces cost-effective results. As telecommuting workers increasingly operate from homes, this type of software has grown very important for numerous lean businesses, especially manufacturers.

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Colored Cardboard Signs

One innovation first used in Japan as a tool for increasing efficiency, simple colored cardboard signs can assist a plant's bottom line. A worker can place a brightly-colored sign in a cart after removing an item for use in assembly on the shop floor. The signs help alert inventory departments to transfer more widgets out of inventory and lets managers monitor assembly teams in real time.

Surveys

Conducting surveys with specific departments to better understand each operational area enables plant managers to appreciate the fine details of production on a visceral level. Teams of employees may offer answers that enable management to direct resources more efficiently in the manufacturing environment. Productivity ultimately benefits.

Custom Solutions

Lean manufacturers can benefit from custom solutions developed especially for their processes. Temperature control solutions like Powerblanket tank heaters and material tracking software have allowed manufacturers to maintain compliance while staying cost-effective.

Suggestion Boxes

One frequently overlooked lean management tool in an industrial setting, ironically, usually involves the least cost to implement. Posting a suggestion box in a prominent location and inviting customers, business associates and plant employees of every category to offer their own suggestions for enhancing efficiency sometimes pays big dividends. Since workers on the factory floor often understand the practical aspects of making high quality products much better than management, giving them an opportunity to offer cost-saving or efficiency-promoting suggestions makes sense. This American lean management tool probably deserves wider consideration internationally.

By Emma Sturgis

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