Manufacturing has come a long way since the 1950s when Toyota Motor Company introduced the concept of implementing an integrated process for organisations to be more efficient and manage equipment, materials and its workforce throughout the production cycle. Over time, this technique allowed Toyota to deliver more reliable, higher-quality products and at a lower cost than other mass-produced automakers. In the 1990s, the practice of eliminating waste to create customer value with fewer resources had caught on in a number of countries all around the world.
While the concept and best practices of the lean production system remain intact, the implementation on the plant floor faces a major face lift. That’s simply because the entire manufacturing dynamic has transformed to include new technology, new global competition, new government regulations, and a hyper-connected world of intelligent devices and social networks that enable seamless communication between companies and their customers.
Times have changed. In order to remain an acute manufacturer, lean methodologies must adapt and change too. Otherwise, organisations will remain stuck in the 1950s while the competition rises into 21st-century manufacturing.
Before running into a new Lean manufacturing model, however, it’s a worthwhile exercise to take a step back to identify what’s different and the direct impact it has on lean processes.
Technology is not bad – Early pioneers of Lean systems pursued strategies of removing IT from production processes, viewing this technology as an additional step which could be leaned out of processes to remove waste. This philosophy was probably reasonable in the 1970s when technology was in its early stages; today, however, it is a completely different situation with a level of complexity that is mandatory that IT systems must remove the waste of processes.
Spotting the right technology – The Just-in-Time mentality to deliver a product is now being transplanted by a need to be more predictive and insightful. Manufacturers need to know what customers want—and for that, they are turning to Big Data and predictive analytics. While Big Data deals with different data sets that don’t always seem relevant to the plant floor, everything in the form the supply chain, plant floor, enterprise, and beyond must be interconnected in today’s day and age. Therefore, it’s time to analyse the impact of every data stream on the production of goods.
Global competition – Cost pressure and the need to move closer to end-users has only accelerated the push to go global; as a result, the need to understand foreign cultures and designing new products and services for them has never been more acute. Lean must now be agile to support continuous innovation while comprehending the complexity associated with an ever-changing, fast-paced global world. All of this requires a fresh look at by Lean manufacturing practices.
Government regulations – New regulations emerge in specific industries all of the time, forcing companies to reexamine processes. Time to digitise processes and reevaluate how quality practices are implemented, tracked, and audited is mandatory.
Hyper-connectivity: the future is now – The new customer service interface is social media— especially from a mobile device. This means someone can post a comment or photo of your product anytime, anywhere. And an immediate response is needed. Manufacturers must somehow capture the information—down to every last tweet—and skim through it to identify trends that can be pushed back into the research, development, and production cycles.
Lean manufacturing is still a good idea. Read our previous blog to know more http://bit.ly/2TsdINr But, like everything else in manufacturing, the process must progress to keep pace with the organizational shifts that keep happening around it. Also, traditionally accepted best manufacturing practices have to get better. Either way, Lean is not going away, it’s just in a new phase of innovation and transformation.
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