Introduction to Basics of Lean Management

Explore muda, mura, and muri while identifying the eight waste types (downtime) to balance production, reduce cycle time, and emphasize value-added activity.

Overproduction wastes resources by producing too much too soon or on forecast rather than demand. Align output with customer needs to reduce storage and changeovers; apply TPM to cut waste.

Inventory is the supply of materials above the minimum needed. It ties up financial resources and signals quality problems like rework, guiding just-in-time material strategies to reduce waste.

Identify defects as the first act of waste and learn to add value by doing it right first time, reducing rework through visual controls, standard operating procedures, and mistake proofing.

Identify transportation waste as unnecessary movement of people, material, or information, and reduce it by minimizing physical distance with zoning, better layouts, cellular layouts, and visual control tools.

Identify waiting waste from idle parts and information delays, inaccurate inventories, and idle workers awaiting operations. Balance workloads with cycle time and talk time to meet customer requests without delay.

Identify motion waste from unnecessary movement and excessive walking at workstations, and map physical flow with a value stream map and visual control tools to reduce this waste across processes.

Eliminate over processing waste by removing features the customer does not need or will not pay for. Use value stream mapping to differentiate value adding from non-value adding activities.

Empower people to unlock unused creativity and prevent waste by avoiding micromanagement and leveraging the collective knowledge of long-tenured employees; lean management aims to eliminate intellectual waste.

Discover how lean philosophy targets the eight types of waste to eliminate non-value-added steps, continuously improve processes, and use lean tools in concert to increase customer value.

Explore how culture and awareness shape lean change, learn to create awareness of change, and communicate with affected teams to guide more effective, profitable process improvements.

Explore lean tools such as 5s, poka-yoke, just in time, kanban, and smed to reduce waste, enable continuous improvement, and improve overall equipment effectiveness and tpm.

Apply the 5s method—sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain—to establish a place for everything, eliminate waste, and build safety, space, and productivity through daily visual controls.

Visual management uses visual controls to create a transparent, productive workplace, enabling micro-level decisions, clear workflow, stock visibility, safety, and quality checks.

Explore standard operating procedures to standardize pen production, establish operational definitions, and communicate via visuals to ensure consistent quality and continuous improvement.

Explore total productive maintenance (TPM) as a program to boost production, morale, and job satisfaction. Review maintenance types: breakdown, preventive, periodic, predictive, time-based, corrective, and maintenance prevention, and minimize downtime.

Explore the purpose and types of mistake proofing (poka-yoke) and its benefits. See real-world examples like elevator sensors, room key holders, and parking brake shutdown.

Apply pokayoke to manufacturing processes to prevent defects from progressing between steps using shutdown, control, and warning modes in prediction and detection with sensing devices.

Learn about the single minute exchange of die, or quick changeover, and how rapid setup achieves single-digit changeovers. Shoigu Shingo developed this approach to cut setup times.

Discover a step-by-step roadmap for single minute exchange of die, identifying a pilot area, converting internal elements to external, and streamlining to reduce changeover time.

Explore work measurement as techniques to establish task time and speed for a qualified worker or process, revealing benefits like reduced labor cost, improved supervision, and productivity.

Learn how kanban uses visual signals to trigger production based on demand, not forecast, through cards, signals, and dashboards, to reduce inventory, waste, and costs while boosting flexibility and output.

Introduce kaizen as a company-wide approach to continuous improvement, where all employees collaborate to achieve regular incremental improvements in the manufacturing process, leveraging collective talent for change for good.

Kaizen part 1 links an action plan with a guiding philosophy and organizes events that engage teams at all levels to propose and implement continuous improvements across the company.

Learn how kaizen drives lean management by mapping the current state with standard operating procedures and kanban, seeking small, worker-driven improvements. Quality circles foster ownership and motivation.

Discover the principles of one piece flow in lean manufacturing, including single piece flow, continuous flow, just-in-time production, and the cellular layout.

Review lean tools for waste elimination and raise awareness of five s, visual management, and sops. Highlight tpm, poka-yoke, smed, kanban, kaizen, and one-piece flow to drive continuous improvement.

Learn to map existing business processes with high-level maps such as IP Ossi maps or C-PAC maps, mid-level and value stream maps, to explain a process or identify a problem.

Learn to use SIPOC maps to outline high-level processes, identify suppliers, inputs, process steps, outputs, and customers, and drill down into mid-level and detailed maps while ensuring linkage across levels.

Use SIPOC maps to create visual context for lower level process maps, linking levels and guiding the data collection and implementation planning for process improvement.

Explore functional deployment maps, a cross-functional swim lane map that shows steps, accountable individuals, and handoffs, while identifying current state processes and opportunities for waste elimination with color-coded symbols.

Learn how value and value streams drive lean manufacturing by mapping information and material flows, identifying value added and non-value added steps, and applying the five lean principles.

Apply value stream mapping as a strategic tool to understand the organization's status and improve lead time, cost, and inventory by linking information flow to material flow and reducing waste.

Value stream maps document the flow from customer to start, separating value added from waste. Create current and future state maps, quantify lead time, and apply line balancing tools.

Capture data such as lead time, cycle time, throughput time, bottlenecks, changeover time, uptime, and process efficiency to build a value stream map and target lead time improvements.

Learn takt time, a lean concept calculated as available work time per day divided by customer demand per day, with two components: available work time and units to be produced.

Learn the general symbols used in value stream mapping to accurately build a value stream map. Understand how these symbols guide process visualization and improvement in lean management.

Learn guidelines to build a value stream map by mapping information, materials, and people flows from customer requirements to delivery, using a current state map, large canvas, and team collaboration.

Build a value stream map centering the customer, marking entry/exit points, and noting cycle time. Show material flow left to right and information flow right to left.

Define value in lean terms, distinguish value-added from non-value-added activities, map value streams, and build current state and future state value stream maps with data, metrics, and symbols.

Leverage total employee involvement and empowerment to drive continuous improvement within high performance work systems, integrating process thinking, strategic planning, and data-based decisions to meet stakeholder expectations.

Compare lean and total quality management, showing how lean reduces waste and defects across the organization, while TQM emphasizes conformance to internal requirements and systematic quality control.

Examine total quality management as a customer-focused, process-driven approach for long-term success, featuring employee involvement, continual improvement, and fact-based decision making, and compare it to lean's defect reduction focus.