Lean Manufacturing is the production system built on eliminating waste, levelling flow, and producing to actual demand rather than to forecast. It originates in the Toyota Production System and is where most Lean tooling comes from.
Its core claim is that most of the time a product spends in a factory is spent waiting, and that reducing waiting matters more than working faster. Everything else follows: pull rather than push, small batches rather than large ones, stopping when something is wrong rather than continuing.
Nástroje sú až výsledkom tejto myšlienky. Value Stream Mapping ukazuje, kde sa stráca čas, SMED sprístupňuje malé dávky, Heijunka vyrovnáva plánovanie, Kanban riadi tok, Jidoka a Poka-Yoke zabraňujú šíreniu chýb. Ak sa zavedú jednotlivo, ide o techniky; ak sa zavedú spoločne, tvoria systém – a v tomto rozdiele zvyčajne spočíva dôvod, prečo jedna implementácia funguje a druhá nie.
The persistent misreading is Lean as a cost-reduction programme. Cost falls as a consequence of flow, but organisations that start from headcount rather than flow generally remove the slack that made improvement possible and stall.
