Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Lean flow minimizes waste

How does flow minimize waste in production?

Flow minimizes waste in the following ways:


  • Waste: Over-production. Flow improved the leadtime and thereby the need for forecasting is removed (maybe still necessary at a higher level). With short leadtime over production is not necessary - production is “make to order”.
  • Waste: Transportation. By creating flow the need for transporting goods to/from shelves/stocks and transporting goods between processes is removed.
  • Waste: Waiting. Because processes are stabile (a condition for flow) and in time-balance, neither processes nor persons should wait for other processes.
  • Waste: Excess processing. Flow can not remove this waste. It is a management job to identify the customer needs and only meet this demand.
  • Waste: Inventory. Flow removes all need for inventory.
  • Waste: Rework or correction. Flow will not remove rework or correction, but the stabilization process before flow was created, demands that time spend on rework and correction is minimized.
  • Waste: Motion. A lot of unnecessary motion is cause by a lack of flow. With flow parts are automatically moved to the process.

1 comment:

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About the author:

After graduate studies in France and the US, Eichi Kobayashi works as a consultant in the field of operational performance. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars around the world. He can be contacted at: E.Kobayashi@graffiti.net