Lean Manufacturing Approach

In order to understand the current situation, we may need to conduct a self-assessment that will provide a sounding board or reflective mirror for our operating condition as it stands today. It will provide feedback regarding where we currently demonstrate capability, and it will reveal gaps between how things are being done today and what are considered to be sound lean practices. To provide some level of insight into this gap, one need only to look at the landmark MIT study conducted by Womack, Jones, and Roos (see The Machine That Changed the World ) to understand how far some operations are from being lean. Facilities that are considered lean operate with far fewer resources as compared to those facilities that operate as mass producers: “Lean production vs. mass production: 1/2 the human effort in the factory, 1/2 the manufacturing space, 1/2 the investment tools, 1/2 the engineering hours, 1/2 the time to develop new products.”