New year, new business goals to make – so why use last year’s approach? Lean is a principle for eliminating gluttonous waste in your business, allowing for maximum profit. Using lean practices creates:
- Value for your customers
- A work environment that fosters employee excellence
Developed in the 30’s by Toyota Motor Group for their manufacturing plant, Lean practices now encompasses many industries including yours.
How does lean work?
The main focus of lean is to continuously distinguish wastes in the workplace and eradicate them. The 7 common types of waste are:
- Defects or errors in products and/or services
- Overproduction
- Inventory
- Non-Value Added Processes
- Unnecessary Movement
- Waiting
- Transportation
Value Stream Mapping is an excellent way to put your workplace on a lifestyle change by finding the fat in your workplace and losing it!
Value Stream Mapping
Value stream mapping is diagramming and mapping services to see which processes are and are not working. This will improve overall efficiency. To implement value stream mapping start by identifying a product or service. Draw the steps and processes the product or service take from start to finish and assess what would be considered one of the 7 wastes and eliminate it. Keep in mind, as your business is a continual work in progress, so is Lean. Lean is not a “crash diet”; it is a lifestyle change for your business.
Here is an example on how Lean can help a business. Say you own a pizza place and a customer orders a pizza with half pepperoni and half onions and peppers. Jane at the counter writes the order down and when she hangs up the phone, she inputs it into the computer and throws away the piece of paper. In the back, John receives the order and starts to make the pizza. While John is working on this order, he is making several cheese and pepperoni pizzas as he thinks it will be a busy night due to a big football game. When the pizza is finished, John negates other orders he is making to walk up to Jane with the order. She will then hand it off to the Jack, the delivery person. If a value stream map were created for this scenario you would see all the wastes in this situation:
Jane
Writing down the order on a piece of paper and transferring it to the computer is non-value added process and is also creating a margin for error, as she may have written the order down incorrectly. If Jack delivers the wrong order, the pizza will now have to be recreated, resulting in a loss of effort, transportation and money. To utilize lean, Jane would pick up the phone and type the order into the computer at the same time. Reading the order back to the customer would also ensure the proper order went through.
John
Creating more pizzas than expected, John is overproducing. What if the night doesn’t go as John predicted? The pizzas would become waste. Bringing the order up to Jane while he has other orders to tend to, John is also creating unnecessary movement. To utilize lean, pizzas should be made as the orders come in and John should stay in the kitchen area.
Jack
Instead of waiting for the pizza delivery to come to him, it would be more efficient for Jack to take the pizza from the kitchen to allow less hand offs.
This scenario shows how value stream mapping and identifying waste can contribute to an overall customer experience. Lean is a continuous process and it involves employee initiatives and feedback. John, Jack and Jane can make constant changes to the future state of the order/delivery process to minimize efforts and maximize profits.
Why lean is so instrumental towards a successful business is it creates thinking among staff members on how to make processes simpler and more efficient. When you cut the unwanted fat from your business, profit margin becomes higher and customer value is added.
