3 Tools Everyone in the Lean Industry Should Be Using in 2020

Lean Solutions Tools
Businesses of all sizes, within every industry, are always looking for innovative ways in which they can maximize productivity, reduce cost, and make their operation as efficient as possible; lean solutions will do just that. Practicing lean solutions enhance the productivity and safety of workplaces, with a particular focus on the manufacturing and distribution sectors.

By implementing a lean solution, waste will be eliminated. This doesn’t just mean actual physical waste; it means wasted time, wasted effort, and wasted money. This is achieved by adding value to the things that matter, and eliminating those that don’t.

Tools within the lean industry will identify and steadily eliminate waste while improving quality and production; so which of these do you need to be using?

Value Stream Mapping
This is a lean management tool that everyone should be using. Value stream mapping analyzes a current process, of either a product or a service, and streamlines it to be as effective as possible. By tracking and recording information such as error rates, downtime, work and wait times or inventory excess a value stream map can be built to see where efficiencies can be made. The lean industry can be broken down into many stages, this is a tool that can be applied to any one of them, or the complete process as a whole.

Error Proofing
In any industry margins are tight, mistakes can and often do cost money. Striving to achieve zero defects is the end goal for so many businesses in the lean industry. By using error proofing techniques, errors or defects can be detected at source, your operation can be streamlined and downtime that was previously caused by errors will become a thing of the past.

Mixed Model Processing
Mixed model processing allows businesses in the lean industry to be flexible in their approach to manufacture. The ability to change production on a daily if not hourly basis offers not only a greater range of products, it reduces inventory accumulation, reduces storage costs and improves shipment and delivery dates.

Through unrivaled customer focus, innovative design and a pragmatic approach, lean solutions are changing the way that many industries approach their day to day tasks.