'Lean' business

saraharrow

Hi normskiuk, thanks for your views, it makes things easier to understand. There is senoir management buy in - Me, what I say goes, lol. I am a communications manager and my job will be to understand all the systems thoroughly in order for it to be undertaken. We are only small at the moment so if we start as we mean to go on, all our new employees should be used to working 'lean' or so i think, and I have been wrong before, lol. Thanks once again. Sarah

ajaxgeezer

saraharrow wrote: »

Hi normskiuk, thanks for your views, it makes things easier to understand. There is senoir management buy in - Me, what I say goes, lol. I am a communications manager and my job will be to understand all the systems thoroughly in order for it to be undertaken. We are only small at the moment so if we start as we mean to go on, all our new employees should be used to working 'lean' or so i think, and I have been wrong before, lol. Thanks once again. Sarah

... Sarah, normski is spot on with everything he says IMO. When you say you have top management buy-in, make sure it's not just lip-service. Many good lean projects from yellow/green and even black belts have gone belly-up because management didn't fully commit. Again, like normski, if you want to PM then feel free, though he will have a better understanding of the essential data tools like Minitab if you want to look that far.

Oh, and Normski... guess who's spending Friday collecting more data for a round of VSM'ing... :rolleyes:

normskiuk

ajax,

Hopefully it will all be worth while!!! Happy data collecting!!!

valleymatt

I work for a large manufacturing company and we introduced 'Lean' a few years ago. Since then the business has really trimmed down on its waste, unnecessary motion and reorganisation. 'Lean' manufacturing has enabled us to finely tune the procedures and processes we use which are not only aimed at making things simpler and quicker, but could also prove to be cost saving.

As part of the 'Lean' initiative, we also used other theories such as 6sigma, the 8 wastes, CANDO and Kaizen.

Whether or not 'Lean' would be the right way to go for your business can only be answered by you, but I would suggest giving it a go and assessing the benefits for yourself.

There are many different books and materials available which support and guide you through introducing 'Lean', so do your research and then decide whether to commit to it or not.

Best of Luck!

Valleymatt

Debt_Free_Chick

John Seddon publishes many of his articles on Lean, for free, on his website.

I've seen Lean applied with tremendous success to a Customer Service operation, so it's application is not restricted to manufacturing.