Lean Technology
All business processes contain waste – activities that do not add value for your customers and make your costs higher than they need to be. Lean Practices can help. By identifying and eliminating waste, business processes can be re-engineered so that both your factory floor and your office run more efficiently. Companies that embrace and implement Lean Practices see a significant reduction in inventory, faster delivery times, and improvement in product quality.
By employing a systematic, proven, organized way to analyze production and non-production activities, businesses can determine the value of each process component. Once this exercise is complete, waste – defined as anything that does not physically change the product for the benefit of the customer – is identified and a strategy for eliminating it can be developed.
Lean Technology Workshops
Godlan has developed a workshop series that is conducted at the customer’s site. Godlan’s Lean Technology Workshop Series includes the following sessions:
- Leadership Class – 1/2 day, Lean training overview and road map
- Business Assessment – 2 days, assessment and scoring of business processes
- Value Stream Mapping – 2 days, current and future state mapping exercise
- Kaizen Event – 5 days, training and development of processes
Godlan’s Role
- Training the customer team on the value-stream mapping process
- Instruction on the Lean Tools and recommendations on which ones to employ in each situation
- Assistance with the implementation of best practices
- Guidance on implementing changes within the existing SyteLine Manufacturing ERP system (when applicable)
- Auditing the process changes implemented to assure that they are staying in place
- Development of internal lean champions
Value-Stream Mapping
With Godlan’s value-stream mapping methodology, each process is reviewed by the team to identify opportunities to save time and dollars. When combined with practical training in the Lean Tools, a roadmap of how to get from Point A to Point B can be put in place to achieve the ideal state and eliminate the waste.
Value-stream mapping is a systematic, graphical representation of a production process for a given product or product family. It uses standard icons and arrangements that allow everyone to understand and discuss the process. As part of the value-stream mapping process, activities and motions are sliced into buckets – value added and non value-added.
The mapping process includes the following continuous improvement steps:
- Development of a “current state” map that documents the current process and benchmarks metrics
- Analysis of the current state by an employee team and recommendations for improvements of the process
- Creation of “future state” value-stream map showing the expected benefits
- Evaluation of the recommendations to study costs and benefits
- Development of a clear and achievable implementation plan
- Implementation of the new processes
- Follow-up audits and measurement of key performance indicators
In Summary
Lean practices have been proven to dramatically reduce costs, improve quality, and shorten lead times. By participating in Godlan’s Lean Initiative Workshops, you will know where the waste is and how to address it. Your production processes will be displayed in a visual map, and you can begin to refine the shortest and most effective route to get from point A to point B.
View Godlan’s Lean Technology press release
or register to Download the Infor SyteLine ERP Manufacturing software demo.
The most frequently-seen areas of waste include:
- Overproduction – making product ahead of time or more than is required by the next operation
- Waiting – equipment, people, or materials sitting idle
- Transport – moving materials more than necessary
- Excess Inventory – too much raw material, work in process, or finished goods
- Motion – unnecessary movement by the workers
- Defects – items not made correctly the first time, scrap, or rework
- Overprocessing – taking unneeded processing steps
- Underutilization – not utilizing employees’ talents to the full potential
