Understanding Lean Manufacturing And How Salesforce Is Vital In Its Implementation
The fourth Industrial Revolution comes along with several other manufacturing practices that are aimed at maximizing efficiency. One such practice is lean manufacturing.
What’s lean manufacturing and why is it important?
Lean manufacturing is all about doing more with less by adopting a ‘lean thinking’. A lot goes on in the manufacturing process that yields a lot of time and resource wastage. In lean manufacturing, the goal is to optimize processes and eliminate all kinds of waste that prove costly to the manufacturing process.
It involves apparently simple but never-ending efforts to completely eliminate or reduce ‘Muda’- a Japanese word meaning waste or any activity that adds no value to the overall process but consumes resources. These efforts target design, distribution, manufacturing and customer service processes.
The ultimate benefit that lean manufacturing targets is to greatly reduce costs while still delivering high-quality products that customers want and ready to pay for.
The Lean Approach
The Lean approach is founded on the principle of a thorough evaluation of a manufacturing process to find out the things that are done right and those that need to removed, or adapt all steps within the manufacturing process that are possibly generating waste.
The waste, otherwise known as ‘Muda’, includes any activity that does not add value to the end product delivered to the users or offered as a service.
Although the aim with Lean is to cut costs, it does not necessarily translate to inferior product quality. It’s all about rethinking and finding simple, better and more efficient ways of doing the same things to yield even more superior end products.
The Lean philosophy promotes continuous improvement through small and sustainable changes instead of making rapid, irregular and abrupt changes which only prove disruptive to the workplace.
As such, you empower the people who actually work with these processes, materials, and equipment, to take forward the changes brought about by adopting the lean philosophy.
The Concept Of Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing was first introduced to us in a 1991 book by James Womack titled “The Machine That Changed the World“.
In the book, lean manufacturing is defined as a theory aimed at simplifying and organizing the work environment. The goal was to reduce waste and keep everything and everyone in the workplace to be responsive to whatever is needed at the moment.
But the big question revolves around finding a balance on how to reduce waste and at the same time, doing things more efficiently without compromising the quality of products rendered to customers.
Another dilemma that baffles many adopting lean manufacturing is how to keep up with the changing demands so that they can respond as quickly as possible.
Waste will always cost you money. That cost will automatically trickle down to your customers forcing them to pay more for your products and services. As a result, they may decide to look for the same products or services elsewhere at a lower price.
To survive a competitive market requires a lot of flexibility because everyone else is trying to remain competitive. The flexibility is measured in how quickly one is able to respond to changes in demand.
Focus on the customer
Lean manufacturing proposes a customer-value focus in a bid to achieve the efficiencies. This focus consists of investigating what your customers are willing to pay and what exactly the customers values.
Customers only pay for what gives them value because that’s what they want. If your product offers value that meets their needs and are willing to buy it because of that, then you are ready for the competition.
Customers must not pay for defects or even for extra costs that come because of your own inefficiencies like large inventories.
In essence, your customers must not be made to pay for your production problems or for the waste unnecessarily generated in the production process. These waste come in different categories that you must watch out for.
Categories of waste that are to be eliminated by lean manufacturing:
- Overproduction which leads to unnecessary storage costs.
- Waiting which looks at the lag time between productions steps/stages. One needs not to wait for a task to complete before they begin theirs.
- Inventory which looks at whether you are having very high inventories for work in progress and supply levels Or whether you are buying too many raw materials that attract unnecessary storage costs.
- Transportation which looks at how efficiently you are transporting materials or using alternatives for best transportation rates.
- Over-processing which looks for the possibility that you are unnecessarily working too many times on your product.
- Motion which checks for the efficiency in how people and equipment are moved between tasks.
- Defects which looks at the time being spent on finding and fixing production mistakes.
- Workforce which considers how efficiently you are using your workforce.
The Toyota production system (TPS) documented the first seven (7) sources of waste and together called them as Muda. Lead manufacturing now adds the workforce as a source of waste and rightly so because it’s possible to inefficiently use your workforce.
The concepts of lean advocates for simple, small and unceasing improvements. Rather than channeling all your energy in revolutions, channel your focus on changing one small thing at a time. It could be as simple as changing the location of a button or CTA on a web page. The idea is taking things one step at a time making sure you don’t disrupt the whole process.
In the end, these small changes put together is likely to lead to a higher efficiency level throughout the whole system.
Leverage Salesforce to help you run lean operations and focus on what you do best
Salesforce is truly revolutionary. Getting the right Salesforce manufacturing solution is your ticket to surviving today’s business challenges and stay competitive. That solution will help you streamline your supply chain, maximize profits while minimizing oversupply. That is made possible with enhanced visibility into real-time operation through the integration of front- and back-end systems — such as CRMs, ERPs, social media management, and inventory management — on a single platform.
Ready to transform your manufacturing business?
Plumlogix’s manufacturing clients are able to achieve greater visibility, speed, visibility, and coordination across key business processes including collecting customer feedback, comparing forecasted sales to units sold, etc.
At Plumlogix, we work with you at every stage of your Salesforce implementation, whether you need initial set up, a means to accelerate adoption rates, customization of an existing system or improve user performance. We are ready to help you achieve a better understanding of your available options and make the right choice moving forward even as you implement lean operations.
Start your transformation here: www.plumlogix.com.
