Traditional Vs Lean Manufacturing Concepts

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When you think about lean manufacturing we think about the work cell, kanban cards, TQM, and so on. But many people the fundamental error. This error is not understanding the concepts on which lean production is built. Many people who copied the lean manufacturing failed because they did not understand the concepts behind lean manufacturing.

We give a simple definition of lean manufacturing before we go any further. Lean manufacturing can be defined as a systematic approach to continually identify and remove waste from the system. All the tools and techniques are based on the fulfillment of this simple request.

to identify the conceptual difference between lean production and conventional production, we will look at the definition given above. This is very important to remember the words. This is the "removal". Removing waste from the system might not sound very different to minimize waste in the system, as discussed in conventional production. But think carefully. These two words are very different in the context of production (or even a ).

When you think about minimizing waste, you are thinking about the current system where you waste. You think about that reduces waste by fine tuning the system. When you think about eliminating and removing waste from the system, you will need to find the causes for the wastes and remove them from the system. That means you have to redefine the process so that no waste is generated. In the first case you live in a system where there are waste, and fight to get some improvements. Later, you change the system so that the system itself will have no waste. They are not really any different?

I'll give you another example to clarify the conceptual difference between lean manufacturing and traditional manufacturing. Think about the work in progress (WIP). In the traditional production process WIP is treated as an asset that helps to run the process smoothly. Lean production, however, treats WIP as a waste itself. Moreover, lean manufacturing treats WIP as a mirror which reflects the lack of system.

I can go on and on explaining the conceptual differences these systems have. But it is very important to understand one thing about lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is not fine-tuning to the traditional production system you have. This is a completely different system. To be able to implement lean manufacturing correctly, the conceptual difference between lean manufacturing and traditional manufacturing.

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