Lean Production

What Is Lean Manufacturing?

The core idea of lean manufacturing, (i.e., lean production) is actually quite simple; relentlessly work on eliminating waste from the manufacturing process.

What Is Waste?

Waste is defined as any activity that does not add value from the customer’s perspective. According to research conducted by the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC), fully 60% of production activities in a typical manufacturing operation are waste – they add no value at all for the customer.

The good news is that just about every company has a tremendous opportunity to improve by eliminating waste, using lean manufacturing techniques and other manufacturing best practices.

What Are Lean Manufacturing Techniques?

The techniques of lean manufacturing enable you to deliver higher quality products at significantly lower costs. Now that is something to get excited about!

It can be difficult to find reliable and well-written information about improvement techniques for manufacturing. So, our goal is to provide you with the absolute best source of easy-to-understand information for helping you improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability of your manufacturing operations.

With that in mind, we have designed each lean production topic on this site to be self-contained and to stand on its own. If you want to learn about a topic, simply forge ahead and read about it. We have worked to make it particularly easy to explore the topics that are of most interest to your situation.

If you would like to connect with us, feel free to drop us a line at [email protected].

EASY

Our goal is to create learning materials that are easy to understand and easy to implement. We believe that even complex topics can be made easier and more accessible.

PRACTICAL

We are realistic about what is within the reach of most teams to accomplish – and the resource limitations that we all face. We want to help you achieve quick progress.

FLEXIBLE

We are not dogmatic about lean. We respect tradition and we honor heritage – but not at the expense of progress. We believe that lean should be living and adaptable.

PEOPLE-FOCUSED

We emphasize the critical role of people (like you) in creating sustainable long-term change. It’s one of the under-appreciated and least-practiced aspects of lean.

Lean Production Topics

TOP 25 LEAN TOOLS

Explore the world of lean through this collection of 25 lean tools.

OEE

Leverage OEE to accurately measure manufacturing productivity.

THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS

Focus improvement efforts on the constraint to improve throughput.

TPM

Engage operators with a proactive approach to maintaining equipment.

SHORT INTERVAL CONTROL

Drive improvement with quick and focused reviews during the shift.

SMED

Reduce changeover times to under 10 minutes with the SMED methodology.

Additional Resources

This website is presented by Vorne. We are experts in the field of improving manufacturing productivity and our flagship product is the XL Productivity Appliance™. Our other websites include:

OEE

The original and best resource for learning about Overall Equipment Effectiveness.

VORNE

Home of our flagship product for improving manufacturing – the XL Productivity Appliance™.