Lean Goals and Strategy
The espoused goals of Lean manufacturing systems differ between various authors. While some maintain an internal focus, e.g. to increase profit for the organization, others claim that improvements should be done for the sake of the customer
Some commonly mentioned goals are:
- Improve quality: To stay competitive in today's marketplace, a company must understand its customers' wants and needs and design processes to meet their expectations and requirements.
- Eliminate waste: Waste is any activity that consumes time, resources, or space but does not add any value to the product or service. See Types of waste, above.
Taking the first letter of each waste, the acronym "TIM WOOD" is formed. This is a common way to remember the wastes.
- Reduce time: Reducing the time it takes to finish an activity from start to finish is one of the most effective ways to eliminate waste and lower costs.
- Reduce total costs: To minimize cost, a company must produce only to customer demand. Overproduction increases a company’s inventory costs because of storage needs.
The strategic elements of Lean can be quite complex, and comprise multiple elements. Four different notions of Lean have been identified:
- Lean as a fixed state or goal (Being Lean)
- Lean as a continuous change process (Becoming Lean)
- Lean as a set of tools or methods (Doing Lean/Toolbox Lean)
- Lean as a philosophy (Lean thinking)
Read more about this topic: Lean Manufacturing
Famous quotes containing the words lean, goals and/or strategy:
“I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)