At Integrated Products and Services, we use our industry
experience and expertise, along with our Ecoflex line of products to provide
companies in all industries the ideal tools required to implement the idea of
lean in every manufacturing environment.
Throughout this series of educational articles, discover
Lean Manufacturing and how IPS can help your company reduce mudas and implement
kaizen and the lean spirit in your facility through the use of Ecoflex and
K-tec Industrial Carts.
What is Lean Manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing, lean production, or simply,
"Lean," is a production practice that considers the expenditure of
resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to
be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of
the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as
any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.
Essentially, lean is centered on preserving value with less
work. Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy derived mostly from the
Toyota Production System (TPS). TPS is renowned for its focus on reduction of
the original seven mudas, or wastes to improve overall customer value. The
steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker,
has focused attention on how it has achieved this.
The goal of Lean then becomes the creation and maintenance
of a production system which runs repetitively, day after day, week after week,
consistently. According to its Japanese founders, 80% of lean manufacturing
consists in creating an attitude that eliminates waste and maximizes added
value.
History of Lean
At the end of the 1890's, Frederick W Taylor, the father of
scientific management became the first to introduce what are now known as
standardization and best practices. His work led to the development of time and
motion studies and error-proofing and poka-yoke by Shigeo Shingo, who used
Taylor's work as inspiration.
Frank Gilbreth later introduced the concept of breaking work
down into elementary time blocks. It was around this time that the first
notions of eliminating waste and studying movement began to emerge. In 1910, Henry Ford invented the assembly line for his
standardized Ford Model T while focusing on the concept of waste while
developing his mass assembly manufacturing system. Alfred P. Sloan later
improved on Ford’s system when he introduced the concept of assembly line
diversity at GM.
After the Second World War, Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of
Toyota, developed the idea of "Kaizen", or continous improvement when
he decided he must stop the repairing of poor quality by intensely studying
each stage of the process. Inspired by the supermarkets he has visited in the
USA and given the financial situation during the period, over-production had to
be avoided, and the notion of Pull (building to order rather), rather than Push
(target driven) was developed.
It was with Taiichi Ohno that these themes of lean came
together and with Shingeo Shingo, created the “Just In Time”, “Waste Reduction”
and “Pull System” concepts for Toyota, which, together with other flow
management techniques, resulted in the Toyota Production System (TPS). The TPS has been continuously evolving since. In 1990, James
Womack summarized these concepts to create Lean Manufacturing at a time when
Japanese expertise was spreading to America and the success achieved by
companies applying these principles and techniques became relevant undeniable.
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Integrated Products &
Services Inc. was established in 2006 as a lean manufacturing and material
handling consultation firm and have grown into a leader in the distribution of
modular pipe racking and shelving systems in Canada.
For more information, to request a quote or to set up an
in-house assessment, please contact us.
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