Lower costs while maintaining high quality? You can do with Lean Thinking

A few years ago we posed a question. How can we remain competitive while assuring the quality of our product? After a research period the response we have set ourselves is the Lean Production.

The Lean methodology was born in the automotive industry inspired by Toyota, with the objective to deal with the recent industrial scenario, which requires drastic cost reductions, high quality standards, increasingly rapid implementation, products with short life cycle, need to have a wide range of products, increasingly thrust customization.

Traditional approaches have their main focus in cost cutting. This leads to an impoverishment of the quality of products and to a dangerous formation of a non-dynamic organization, and not prone to change.

Lean production, or even better would be to tell the Lean Thinking has, however, its foundational pillar in the generation of value for the customer. This makes changing optics and shifts the focus by single process for all activities, from design to delivery to the customer, which can be a source of waste and therefore must necessarily be eliminated (overproduction, defective products, unnecessary movements, stocks and processes poorly designed) .

In pursuing the objectives of this approach in the company we have already been implemented some important tools.

  • The application of Value Stream Map, a tool to find out the flow that generates value, then indispensable to find waste.
  • The 5S methodology that includes specific procedures in order to obtain workstations tidy and functional for these jobs.
  • The application of Kan Ban, an organizational tool that allows management to the production shooting. This tool allows you to significantly lower inventories.

Lean thinking is an approach that does not end with a procedure but provides a constant focus for improvement over time, summed up the concept with the Japanese term Kaizen.

Finally, it is imperative that this philosophy is internalized by all operators. Everyone must contribute in keeping the effected change and bring new ideas.

These major changes are bringing important results, in terms of lowering of the times of production, cost reduction and increase of the quality. All this, however, must be maintained over time and is the responsibility of the company take responsibility for this.

Currently they are experimenting with methods of accountability and in particular in the connection between organizational and process improvements, and economic and financial procedures (planning, budget and management control).

The monitoring of results is through periodic meetings of the various working groups involved in Lean activities and through indicators (KPI, Key Performance Indicators) that are gradually implementing.

If today you are asking us how do we maintain the high quality of our products and our competitive prices, we can answer that it is not magic, but it is the result of constant research and commitment to the enforcement of the most suitable procedures to our reality .

We attach an interview that was given to the Penta Systems managers and interior responsible for implementing this system.

INTERVISTA