Manufacturing, if not planned well, can lead to unnecessary waste, inefficient practices, and reduced productivity. This can cost valuable time and money to manufacturers and hurt their competitive position in the marketplace. One solution is lean manufacturing. Companies that invest in lean manufacturing report a whopping 25% increase in productivity.  Similar to warehouses following a lean approach to prevent dead stock and stockout situations, lean manufacturing can help in reducing waste and improving the efficiency of production. Companies report as much as 10-12% gain in areas like manufacturing output, factory utilization and labor productivity after investing in smart factory initiatives to enable lean manufacturing principles. In this article you'll learn what lean manufacturing is and how low code/no code Connected Worker platforms help manufacturers to implement this methodology in their processes.

But what is lean manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing, also known as lean production, is a collection of principles taken to reduce the wastage of time, labour and material during the production process.

In lean manufacturing, the focus is placed on performing only the tasks that add value to the final product and eliminating non value adding steps. This  methodology helps in delivering the best quality product to the customer in the shortest amount of time with the least barriers.

It was the Toyota Production System in Japan that laid the foundation of lean manufacturing. The Toyota Production System included principles like “Just-in-time” manufacturing where the inventory was kept as low as needed and production was ramped up when demand started to increase. The goal was to create a near perfect production method.

Why is lean manufacturing important and how can companies implement it?

The goal is to eliminate wastes and increase efficiency. Production waste includes anything from transportation, inventory, overproduction, defects, over-processing to poorly trained staff. Digital implementation of lean manufacturing can pay huge dividends for companies. 98% of manufacturing companies expect to increase their operational efficiency through digital technologies.

Principles of lean production enable companies to continually adapt according to changing market scenarios and with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, operational agility has become a necessity. Benefits for manufacturers who enact lean manufacturing principles include:

• Improving the quality of the product
• Agility to respond to market fluctuations and other variables for better lead times
• Making the business more sustainable and in line with carbon emission goals
• Increasing overall profits, increasing employees satisfaction
• Reducing attrition rates

While the benefits of practicing lean methodology are evident, putting it into action is not always easy.  Companies often think that implementing different lean tools and techniques in the manufacturing process is enough to adopt the lean system but it isn’t. They need to engage and empower their front line workers as well to build a lean culture.

Low code/ no code Connected Worker Platforms containing a suite of modern digital tools can help organizations achieve the digital transformation necessary for implementing lean manufacturing.  But what are the five most important principles of lean manufacturing?

5 Principles of lean manufacturing

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has created a list of five principles of lean manufacturing. The five principles of lean manufacturing are:

1. Identify value: Companies should be aware of how their customers are using the product, what cost they expect for it and what value it creates for them. This gives insight into your real value as a brand.
2. Map the value stream: A value stream consists of all the activities necessary for manufacturing a product or a service. Mapping the value stream  from procurement to final delivery can help in identifying and eliminating unnecessary steps. This can be very difficult using paper based processes due to the difficulty of properly measuring time spent and the efficiency of the work during each step in a job.  This is vastly simplified with a Connected Worker Platform that time stamps every part of every job and allows you to compare and contrast different sets of workers doing the same task.
3. Create flow: Once non-value steps are eliminated, a flow needs to be created to ensure there are no bottlenecks, waits, or delays in different processes.
4. Establish pull: Adopt Just-In-Time manufacturing to save cost and waste generated from creating excess inventory.
5. Seek perfection: Implement lean manufacturing where every employee can adopt it and take ownership for its execution. Organizations are not static and the lean methodology must change and adjust accordingly. Paper based processes are by definition static and will struggle to enable lean principles.

How do connected worker platforms help with lean manufacturing?

Connected Worker platforms enhance these five principles of lean manufacturing and enable businesses to implement lean manufacturing efficiently and effectively through improving operational visibility and allowing management to make data driven process improvement decisions.

1. Identify value

While a Connected Worker platform can’t help a business with setting the value of the product, connected workers can analyze the production process more closely and identify unnecessary steps that can be removed to reduce the cost of the product. The platform can also identify broken parts of the process that don’t add any value to the product for the customer and help discard them.

2. Map the value stream

Mapping the entire value stream has traditionally been done by following manual approaches like making flowcharts, keeping ledgers and more. There have been additions of technology to the process but none have been able to achieve the full value map envisioned in lean manufacturing.

‍Connected Worker or Front Line platforms give a comprehensive view of the production process from start to finish and help discover non-value-adding steps by providing real time measurement of every single step of a process. Connected Worker platforms bring together humans and machines working in a simple way to create the new value stream map.

3. Connected Worker Platforms Create Flow

Creating flow is something that Connected Worker technology excels at. The lean manufacturing software keeps a record of every action being performed, and managers can clearly see where a process is lagging or inefficient. This data is crucial in figuring out where the gaps and bottlenecks are occurring. Ill-configured stations, idle machines, machine downtime, workers waiting for the next task, and other parameters become easier to measure.

4. Establishing pull

The Toyota Production System pioneered Just-In-Time production in the 1970s but most manufacturers still don’t understand it. Connected Worker technologies help companies with implementing Just-In-Time manufacturing by tightening every step of the process by standardizing tasks and discovering inefficiencies. This increases overall flexibility, reduces changeover time, and allows companies to become efficient enough to reduce inventory. This helps prevent any stockout situations or producing more stock than necessary.

5. Seek perfection

Businesses can “seek perfection” by giving the worker ownership of their part of the process. Connected Worker technologies can help the workers use the tools available in the platform to record their feedback and rapidly escalate it to decision makers. Connected Worker platforms make sure that workers are following the new and improved process, have access to the contextually rich, visual training materials they require to do their best work and give them the ability to make changes to the workflows with a sense of ownership. Atheer is now offering non sequential work mode to enable Layered Process Audits.

Conclusion:

Connected Worker platforms such as Atheer enable companies to incorporate lean manufacturing principles into their business and reap the rewards. This lean manufacturing software helps create an elevated production process that contains fewer unnecessary steps, follows an efficient value stream with less bottlenecks, and enables workers to take ownership of their work to seek perfection.Atheer provides workers with learning resources and materials to help them execute tasks seamlessly.  Atheer’s AR-powered Connected Worker Platform empowers businesses to follow a lean manufacturing process and boost their growth.Atheer helps companies in following all the five principles of lean manufacturing. Atheer’s Connected Worker Platform provides step-by-step digital job instructions, enhanced visibility in manufacturing processes, remote video assistance to expedite problem resolution time, and seamless ERP integration to increase productivity and efficiency for your manufacturing enterprise. Atheer empowers organizations towards digital transformation and its no-code platform can be implemented easily.