When you are looking for ways to cut down on your production costs while maintaining a high standard of quality, hiring a lean manufacturing consulting firm is your path to success.
It is essential to understand the intricacies of industrial engineering and how it relates to lean manufacturing and world class manufacturing, so that customized and comprehensive solutions are designed and implemented to meet your company’s needs.
What is Lean Manufacturing?
All of these steps and processes culminate in the principle goal of lean manufacturing consulting: to reduce waste. Whether you’re looking for ways to minimize errors in your production facility or attempting to get the most out of your talented, hardworking employees, turn to Design Systems, Inc. for assistance in optimizing your business.
There are many steps you can take with our lean manufacturing consulting assistance. The exact steps for your business vary, so it’s important to work closely with a consulting team for best results. Rooting out inefficiencies and designing improvements can be difficult from the inside, so our consultations offer you the outside perspective necessary to identify weak points in your process and provide the training and tools necessary to improve your bottom line.
Benefits of Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing encompasses a number of possible steps to take to improve your business operations in a number of ways. The diversity of lean manufacturing consulting makes it easy to tailor it to your particular situation. Here are some benefits you can expect when you work with Design Systems, Inc. consultants:
- Improved lead times: If you make custom parts, rapid turnaround is critical to your everyday operations. Even mass-produced parts manufacturers need to be aware of changes in demand, so a lean manufacturing facility can respond to these changes.
- Increased employee satisfaction: Your employees may be just as frustrated with inefficiencies as you are. Reducing busy work and unproductive tasks can help employees feel more valued and satisfied with their work.
- Increased quality of products: Inefficiencies in manufacturing don’t just slow down the process, but can affect the quality of your workpieces. Improve the precision and optimize the manufacturing of every piece for improved quality control.
- Decreased waste: Flashing, wasted energy, defective parts and other waste can all add up to major costs for your company. Cut your excess spending with more efficient operations.
- Improved bottom line: In the end, lean manufacturing consultants are trained to help you improve your bottom line. Major or minor improvements across your entire company can result in significant improvements in your bottom line.
History of Lean Manufacturing
Benjamin Franklin championed the idea of reducing waste in business when he wrote his Poor Richard’s Almanack. Since then, scientific management by mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor was created. This process began analyzing, measuring and synthesizing workflow considerations to improve industry in a systematic way.
Lean manufacturing and lean manufacturing consulting were coined in 1988 by John Krafcik. He worked with both GM and Toyota as a quality engineer, which helped inspire his principles.
The Toyota Production System was one of the first major successes in the idea of lean manufacturing. These manufacturing strategies helped grow Toyota into one of the most successful motor vehicle manufacturers in the world.
Using Lean Six Sigma
As part of our lean manufacturing consulting at Design Systems Inc., we also incorporate principles of lean Six Sigma. While the exact definition of Six Sigma varies, the principle focuses on reducing variations and improving controls in a process.
If you don’t have precise control of your company, you don’t have the toolkit you need to reduce inefficiencies. Our lean Six Sigma consultant team uses data-driven performance markers to set optimal performance standards, measure current performance and reduce inefficient operations.
One goal of Six Sigma quality performance is to reduce the amount of defects in a process to 3.4 per million opportunities. The primary goal isn’t necessarily reducing waste, but reducing variation. Ensuring consistency in the workplace is the first step in ensuring consistency in optimal workflow. Work with our team at Design Systems, Inc. to start implementing this process in your company.
Core Objectives of the Lean Process
1.) Reducing Unnecessary Time Spent on Products
Innovation is an essential component to securing your business’s future, allowing you to adapt with changing times. However, sometimes those efforts turn into features or processing techniques that require more specialized equipment or greater time than necessary to fulfill customers’ needs.
Experienced lean manufacturing consulting firms such as DSI can help you refine your processes when the complexity involved in your products does not result in an appropriate cost-benefit ratio.
2.) Making Better Use of Valuable Employees
Untapped talent within your company is an invaluable resource. Recognizing and acknowledging your top workers, matching employees with the jobs best suited to their skills and avoiding overworking your team are all ways of ensuring high morale and optimal productivity from the people in your employ.
Periodically reassessing the roles and duties of your workforce can help you achieve employee satisfaction, which in turn may reduce turnover: When your team members feel they are valued and treated well, they are more likely to remain with your company.
3.) Using Lean Manufacturing Consulting To Trim Excessive Downtime
If your equipment or employees have frequent intervals of unproductive time while waiting for their next contribution to the operation, this could add up to hundreds of wasted hours over the course of the year. Streamlining your production process helps you maximize how efficiently your team and equipment function.
4.) Optimizing Output to Match Demand
An overabundance of inventory occupies space, while the cost of manufacturing those products diverts resources from other things you may need to manage. Our team can analyze the demand versus output for your products and help you find a more sustainable balance.
5.) Shortening Travel Time in Your Facility
An inefficient layout for your business can result in needlessly devoting extra time to moving about within your facility. The farther your team or equipment has to travel to meet objectives, the more the hours of lost productivity add up over time.
Working with our lean manufacturing consulting services, you can redesign your layout for maximum efficiency. Your team and equipment will spend less time in transit, preserving that time for more critical uses.
6.) Identify Faulty and Defective Products
The loss of materials and time to having to scrap inventory and start over may consume a lot of your limited resources. Moreover, a defective product that reaches your customer’s hands can result in lost future revenues, not only from the customer who received the item but also because of negative reviews that customers may leave.
As such, defective products are costly in more ways than one. By working with us, your production process can be analyzed for ways to minimize the number of defects that occur or reach your customers.
Lean Manufacturing Consultants
For any business to sustain its operations and grow to fulfill future demands, reducing waste is a must. Our lean consulting firm takes pride in our role of providing you with lean manufacturing consulting that helps you achieve that. Whether you feel your needs are routine or your industry has special considerations, we have the expertise necessary to assist you. To learn more about the ways we can serve you, contact us today.