6 Principles of Lean Manufacturing

Bossard’s commitment is to help you achieve lean manufacturing at your facility so that you can save time and money and maximize productivity. To reach this goal requires that you follow six basic principles.

Waste Elimination

Eliminating waste is a key principle of lean manufacturing. This requires that you identify work that adds no value and delete it from your workflow to reduce spending and time. Manufacturing waste consists of the following:

• Unnecessary motion
• Wasted inventory
• Overproduction
• Over-processing
• Defective production
• Unnecessary wait time
• Transportation waste

Continuous Improvement

You must continually improve all areas of your business, including production, to achieve lean manufacturing. If you stop, the progress that you attain may not only slow and stop but may also disappear as new challenges arise. One way to ensure continuous improvement is to constantly create goals that everyone needs to reach.

Level Production

Producing the same amount each day makes material ordering and scheduling easier. It demands that you balance both the history of customer ordering and forecasting how much you can produce to meet those orders.

Just-in-Time Production

By working with level production, just-in-time production creates the exact number of goods needed when they’re needed. Because you’re only creating and transporting what’s required, you eliminate unnecessary movement and supplies to save money and time.

Built-in Quality

Build quality into every step of the process from order fulfillment to product design, packaging, and shipping. You can then cut down on the wasted costs and time needed to deal with errors and quality control.

Employee Respect

Implementation of these principles can’t happen without looking at the employees needed to make them happen. You must respect the workers and value what they do through constant communication and useful feedback. They will then respect the company and show commitment to any principles and goals that you implement.

Want to learn more about lean manufacturing and how your business can practice its principles with the help of Bossard? Please contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.