Page 67 - Lean six sigma demystified

46 Lean Six Sigma DemystifieD

charge more for it because it’s ready immediately, not whenever the batch is
finished and shipped from some faraway place. Although a lot of people are
worried that U.S. manufacturing is moving overseas, a Lean shop may find it
easy to compete with low-cost, mass producers who incur shipping costs. If
your industry is worried that China will take over your markets, get Lean!

The Seven Speed Bumps of Lean

There is no waste in business more terrible than overproduction.
—Taiichi Ohno

The seven speed bumps of Lean focus on non-value-added waste, which
includes any activity that absorbs money, time, and people but creates no value.
Toyota describes these as
1. Overproduction. (The most common type of waste) It creates inventories
that take up space and capital.
2. Excess inventory. Excess inventory caused by overproduction is waste.

3. Waiting. Don’t you hate standing in line? So do your products or services.
Are they always waiting for the next value-adding process to start? Don’t
you hate waiting on your computer to boot up? So do employees. Are they
waiting for missing parts or late meeting attendees? Waiting is waste.
4. Unnecessary movement of work products (i.e., transportation). When you
break down the silos into cells, the work products don’t have to travel so
far between processes. My mind, however, seems to respond with more
energy to the phrase “Inventory is fundamentally evil.”

5. Unnecessary movement of employees. Are parts and tools too far from where
they’re needed? Are employees walking too far to get supplies or deliver a
work product? Taiichi Ohno says “Moving is not necessarily working. Find
ways to turn moving into working.”

6. Unnecessary or incorrect processing. Why have people to watch a machine
that can be taught to monitor itself? Why do things that add no value? Is
one group doing something that the next group has to correct? Stop doing
the unnecessary, and start doing everything right the first time.
7. Defects. They lead to repair, rework, or scrap.

Lean will help you reduce or eliminate numbers 1 to 6. Six Sigma will
help you reduce number 7. When you rearrange your production floor into