Manufacturing has always been a competitive sector. But the intensity of competition manufacturers faced in the 1950s pales in comparison to what industry players have to deal with today. Thanks to globalization, manufacturers not only have to contend with local rivals but have to pay even greater attention to competitors beyond their borders.

This often necessitates a shift in business strategy to overcome these new challenges. 

One of these techniques, lean manufacturing, has proved fairly popular. 

Lean manufacturing was introduced in Japan by Toyota back in the 1980s for improving the quality of performance, reducing waste, fully utilizing the resources and keeping cost balanced with profits.

Watching the growth and success of Toyota, many businesses, especially manufacturing businesses started implementing lean manufacturing.

Some businesses found it useful because of managed and seamless implementation while other businesses failed to implement lean manufacturing. 

This blog will discuss the basics of lean manufacturing and reasons why businesses fail to implement and run with lean manufacturing. 

Understanding the Basics of Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing, based on the Toyota Production System, aims to make things better and more efficient. It's all about cutting out anything that doesn't add value to what customers want. This can be things like making too much, mistakes in the products, having too much stuff sitting around, unnecessary movements, waiting times, or too much back-and-forth transportation.

The idea is, by getting rid of these wastes, companies can make better products, faster, and cheaper. They're always trying to find ways to do things even better through tools like value stream mapping and kaizen events, where they come together to brainstorm and improve processes.

Lean manufacturing works on 5 principles and these principles serve as a roadmap for organizations to optimize value delivery to customers while enhancing operational efficiency.

These 5 lean manufacturing principles includes:

1. Value: Identifying what customers value and focusing on delivering that value.
2. Value Stream: Mapping out the entire process from raw materials to the customer to identify areas of waste.
3. Flow: Ensuring that work flows smoothly and continuously through the value stream.
4. Pull: Producing only what is needed, when it is needed, based on customer demand.
5. Perfection: Continuously improving processes to eliminate waste and improve efficiency.

The Benefits of Lean Manufacturing

1. Increased Productivity: Lean manufacturing helps companies streamline their processes, leading to higher productivity levels as tasks are completed more efficiently

2. Reduced Costs: By eliminating waste and optimizing resources, lean manufacturing helps companies cut down on unnecessary expenses, resulting in significant cost savings.

3. Improved Quality: The principles of lean manufacturing focus on identifying and addressing root causes of defects, leading to higher quality products or services and fewer defects or errors.

4. Increased Customer Satisfaction: Lean manufacturing emphasizes delivering value to customers by focusing on their needs and preferences. This results in higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Applicable Across Industries: The benefits of lean manufacturing aren't limited to just manufacturing; they can also be applied to service industries, such as healthcare, finance, and hospitality, to improve efficiency and quality of service delivery.

Despite the clear benefits of lean manufacturing, many companies fail to implement the basics effectively. Let's understand the reasons why companies fail to implement

Reasons Why Companies Fail at Implementing the Basics

Companies often struggle with implementing the basics of Lean Manufacturing due to various pitfalls that hinder their progress. Here are some common reasons behind these failures:

1: Lack of Leadership: 

Lean success is 80 % due to good leadership and 20 % due to other factors. Leaders have to be knowledgeable, involved, engaged and directive towards their lean initiatives and shop floor teams. Poor leadership can hurt and infact make lean initiatives more expensive for a company. One of the primary reasons for failure lies in the lack of commitment from senior management. Without their unequivocal support, junior staff may not take the transition seriously, and middle management might resist necessary changes. Leadership buy-in is crucial to minimize resistance and ensure cooperation across all levels of the organization.

2 : Poor Foundation

Implementing Lean Manufacturing requires thorough preparation, including standardization, prototyping, procedure changes, and staff training. Rushing into the process without laying a solid foundation can lead to mistakes, inconsistency, and inefficiency. It's essential to get the groundwork right to achieve long-term success.

3: Fear of Transformation

The term "lean" often triggers fear among employees due to concerns about job security and redundancy. Clear communication, skill assessment, and transparency regarding the company's future direction are essential to alleviate these fears and retain a committed workforce.

4 : Interference and Involvement of Many

Too many cooks will spoil the dish. Very often everyone is an expert and provides their 2 cents, which can infact confuse the team. Also too many voices can derail good strategies and lead to frequent strategic changes. Lean Manufacturing aims to streamline processes and reduce unnecessary complexity. However, if a company has an excessive number of stakeholders and interfaces to manage, it can introduce potential points of failure. Simplifying the manufacturing process and reducing the number of moving parts is essential for success.

5 : Lack of Knowledge

Knowledge is gold when it comes to Lean. There are many theoretical experts around, but practical knowledge only comes from actually doing kaizens. Lean Manufacturing is built on specific principles that must be consistently applied throughout the workflow. Ensuring that every employee understands these principles and providing adequate training is crucial. Skipping on training can lead to costly mistakes and compromises in the implementation process.

6 : Lack of KPI Understanding

Lean Manufacturing success must be tracked with correct KPI - key performance indicator for each department. KPI is a metric which shows the results of your actions. For example for Quality, a powerful kpi is FTC, First Time Capability. If you manufacture 1000 units per day and 800 are good,200 do not pass quality in the first time ( final inspection on the line ), then your FTC is only 80 %. Consider a digital solution such as FactoryKPI which allows you to track daily kpi for safety, quality, delivery and cost.  

7: Blindly Copying Others

Copy good companies and strategies but consider your culture. Shop floor must accept lean strategies. What works in Japan may not work in Detroit due to cultural difference. You must in this case adapt and implement same principles with innovative methods. While adopting best practices is beneficial, blindly copying techniques from other organizations without considering unique company dynamics can lead to failure. Customizing Lean Manufacturing methodologies to fit the specific needs and challenges of the organization is crucial for successful implementation.

8 : Absence of Benchmarks 

Demonstrating the benefits of Lean Manufacturing through trial runs and prototypes can help convince employees of its efficacy. Engaging employees and allowing them to see firsthand how the new process works can foster enthusiasm and commitment to the change.

Addressing these common pitfalls—such as securing leadership buy-in, laying a solid foundation, simplifying processes, prioritizing knowledge and training, addressing employee fears, establishing benchmarks, and customizing methodologies—can significantly improve the chances of successful implementation of Lean Manufacturing within companies.

Conclusion

Implementing lean manufacturing principles can revolutionize production efficiency, but success hinges on adhering to the fundamentals. When the basics are overlooked, lean initiatives can falter, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities for improvement.

To ensure your lean manufacturing efforts are effective, consider partnering with Orca Lean Digital Solutions for custom software development tailored to your specific needs. Our expertise in creating bespoke solutions will help you seamlessly integrate lean principles into your operations, enhance data tracking, and drive continuous improvement.

Ready to transform your manufacturing processes? Contact Orca Lean Digital Solutions today and discover how our custom software can help you achieve lean success and operational excellence.