How can lean manufacturing help my business?  

‍This is the first thing business owners must ask themselves when considering implementing lean manufacturing principles. The Manufacturing Advisory Service found that across the thousands of projects where they helped implement lean manufacturing practices, 33% of them experienced an increase in stock turnover and space efficiency, 26% of the companies were able to reduce their scrap and meet the delivery target, while 25% experienced an improvement in productivity. This is only the beginning of how Lean Manufacturing can help your business.

Reasons Why Your Company Needs a Lean Manufacturing System

Here are some of the leading signs your company might need a lean manufacturing system:

• Errors and defects in the product have increased. The rate of rejection is also increased, requiring a lot of rework.
• Machine and process breakdowns are causing too much downtime.
• Production and storage of materials take up a lot of warehouse space along with the stock not turning over quickly.
• The efficiency of output per man-hour has decreased.
• Delivery deadlines not being met constantly leading to customer dissatisfaction.
• Employee morale is low and you’re finding it difficult to implement any changes.

While you might not encounter all of the above signs, incorporating lean manufacturing principles can still be beneficial for your company.  In a complex manufacturing environment and competitive market landscape operational efficiency has never been more crucial.

Benefits of Lean Manufacturing Implementation

The Toyota Production System (TPS), which was originated by Toyota in 1948 is based around the idea of increasing efficiency and reducing waste. The Toyota Production System laid the foundations for today’s lean manufacturing principles. While it originally focused on eliminating waste and improving customer satisfaction through continuous improvement of processes, modern lean principles offer multiple other benefits as well. The benefits of following lean principles include:

• Quality Improvement: With enhanced problem identification, root cause analysis, and innovative resolutions, the quality of the final product is improved and defects are captured before they reach the marketplace.
• Improved Lead Time: In lean manufacturing practices, companies are focused on eliminating unnecessary steps to speed up production. As a result they can avoid hoarding inventory and implement just in time production. This all reduces lead time.
• Improved Customer Service: A detailed Customer feedback cycle about the product and what they liked or disliked is important for determining which processes aren’t adding value to the product and what the customer actually wants from the product. This knowledge can also help reduce costs.
• Improved Employee Morale: Lean principles improve communication between  front line workers and management.  Since employees are involved in the decision-making process, their morale is improved because they are given ownership over the jobs they do.
• Increased Efficiency: By eliminating unnecessary steps from the production line, implementing standardized work, and improving communication among employees, production efficiency is increased. This gives manufacturers the flexibility they need to meet customer needs without risking overstock waste.
• Increased Productivity: Lean manufacturing frees up the workers from performing wasteful processes. Now they can focus on the processes that matter.
• Decreased Inventory Costs: Lean processes focus on keeping inventory only to those levels that are needed and not overstocking the inventory.

How Connected Worker Technologies Help Implement Lean Manufacturing Principles

A Connected Worker platform is a suite of modern digital tools that integrates front line workers into their environment through the devices they naturally use in the flow of work like tablets, Smart Phones, Smart Glasses and laptops . This lean manufacturing software system provides visually rich, contextual training, digital workflows that standardize work execution and remote assistance from subject matter experts for when the unforeseen occurs.

Here are some of the ways how a Connected Worker or Front Line Worker platform can help companies in implementing a lean manufacturing system easily and efficiently.

- Eliminating Paperwork

Paper-based processes are slow, time-consuming, and open to errors and tampering. A Connected Worker platform time stamps everything a front line worker does and feeds that information directly to a decentralized cloud. This not only eliminates the need for keeping paper records but also provides real-time data that can help power decision making.

- Raising the Standard

Capturing tribal knowledge from your best employees will help you in improving the performance of new employees and raise the standard of your workforce. This tribal knowledge is enshrined in workflows for standardized job execution.  It also makes sure your front line is meeting the standards set for speed for job execution by making those standards clear and measurable.  A Connected Worker platform does this efficiently by recording every activity a front-line worker performs.

When you are looking to optimize processes for continuous improvement you can study the data and extract the best practices  from your best employees and rapidly implement them in a new digital workflows for everyone to follow. All you have to do is deploy the new process, create a training video and your whole organization can be updated in minutes rather than months.  By integrating learnings into digital workflows you can make real time insights into permanent productivity gains minimizing waste.

With Connected Worker platforms you can set a standard with data, institute a new standard with digitized workflows, study your best performers and come up with new best practices and quickly redeploy. In this way you can set and raise the standard of work within your organization to continuously improve productivity and reduce waste of raw materials. It should be noted that Connected or Front Line Worker platforms serve as a great way to enforce lean management principles.

- Seek Perfection With Improved Communication and Visibility

A Front Line Worker platform empowers workers to take ownership of their front-line tasks and keep the upper management updated. The front line worker can offer feedback on the process through chat integrations or key word supported notifications.

Management gains holistic visibility on all the processes that go together to make a product. They can discover which processes need to be improved and which can be discarded all together. In this way non value adding steps can be eliminated from manufacturing processes and process efficiency improved through continuous improvement.

Conclusion

‍Atheer’s Connected Worker Platform helps businesses implement lean manufacturing practices and improve crucial metrics like OEE.

Atheer’s AR-enabled low code/no code Front Line Worker platform can be integrated into any business easily and empower companies with accurate, real-time information to optimize manufacturing operations to make them safer, faster and more productive.

Atheer’s Connected Worker Platform provides a suite of modern digital tools and techniques that will help your business get all the benefits from implementing lean manufacturing with none of the hassles.