Industry Forum

Lean Manufacturing

Introduction to Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing has it history firmly entrenched within 20th Century Japanese manufacturing. It is widely recognised that the Toyota Production System, developed by Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda between 1948 and 1975, was the precursor to Lean Manufacturing.

Lean Manufacturing techniques remain as relevant now as when they were first developed by Toyota many decades ago and the practises that can be applied to an organisation’s manufacturing operations can help in many ways.

Continuous Improvement

In today’s global economy, most businesses are aware that they must continually improve to survive. Even if you are a world leader in your industry, you must be constantly improving faster than your competitors to maintain and grow profitability.

In many cases it is relatively easy to make individual short term savings but harder to execute a programme delivering sustained cost reduction. The key to reaching and sustaining your manufacturing competitiveness is to have a vision of the future state of a process and a strategic plan for making the vision a reality.

One of the most common approaches to applying lean throughout your manufacturing operations is to apply a lean transformation programme and this is something Industry Forum can help you with.

Tools and Techniques of Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing includes a variety of tools and techniques that help to bring about improvements to your manufacturing system.

  • 5S
  • Heijunka (Level scheduling/Production levelling)
  • Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)
  • Kanban (Pull System)
  • Changeover reduction (SMED)
  • Mistake-proofing (Poka-Yoke)
  • Value Stream Mapping

Get in touch and talk to us

Industry Forum can provide a range of  improvement solutions across your organisation’s entire manufacturing operations. We don’t offer a one size fits all approach, instead we get to know your organisation, your people and the environment within which you operate before working with you to find an approach that is tailored to your requirements, meeting your needs and addressing your most pressing challenges.

Whether it’s Lean Manufacturing, Manufacturing Leadership, Six Sigma or Total Productive Maintenance, Industry Forum can provide you with a range of expertise to support initiatives from large manufacturing improvement programmes across a multi-site organisation to single projects in an individual plant.

From design right through to implementation we pride ourselves on our ability to transfer the necessary skills to your people and to ensure that you benefit from tangible and sustainable improvements to your business.

What Next?

For further information and an initial confidential discussion of your needs, please call +44 (0)121 717 6600 or email us today.