Optimize your processes with Lean Thinking

Lean = hunting for waste and losses

Muda! Muda! is a Japanese word that means waste, and in Italian, it sounds like a cry of alarm!
Any human activity that consumes resources and does not create value in the company is waste, it is waste

In processes, we recognize three forms of waste that, in Lean terminology, are called: Muri, Mura, and Muda.

• Wall  means overload and can refer to the overload of people, machines, or systems.
• Mura  It refers to irregularities in processes. In most cases, the Mura effect is generated by internal processes, such as project deadlines, batch processes, end-of-week/month syndrome, and unbalanced workloads within teams.
• Change: it's everything the customer is not willing to pay for if given the choice.

Walls and barriers are often the underlying causes of the wastes that can be observed in processes.

Among the main wastes, we can list:

• Transportation Any movement of materials, products, documents, and people.
• Inventory Any material or information accumulated and awaiting processing.
• Motion Any human movement, including bending, lifting, twisting, reaching, searching.
• Waiting People waiting for input to be able to complete the next stage of the process.
• Over-processing: Doing more work than necessary without increasing customer value.
• Over-production: Produce more than or before what is needed for the next stage of the process.
• Defects: Everything that isn't right the first time and needs to be corrected or completed.
• Skills Do not fully utilize people's capabilities, their brains, their creativity, or their talents!

The End Customer is at the center of the processes and determines the value, which only becomes meaningful if expressed in terms of a product or service capable of satisfying needs at a given price and at a given time. (Fig 1)

Lean Thinking is an operational philosophy formalized after extensive observation of numerous organizations that have successfully implemented a profound change toward efficiency.

The name is made up of two words:
Lean in pursuit of maximum waste reduction, defined as anything that does not create value for the customer;
Thinking” It highlights the need to develop an open cultural approach to change and continuous improvement. To address profound change.

The starting point is therefore the hunt for waste, beginning with the identification of what is valuable, what is useful, what should be produced, and subsequently aligning the activities that create value in the correct sequence, without interruptions when the customer requests them, and learning to perform them ever more effectively. These concepts already contain all 5 Lean principles:

1st principle – Define Value

The starting point for hunting waste is identifying what has value. Resource consumption is only justified to produce value; otherwise, it is waste.Change).
We must strive to precisely define the value in terms of specific products with specific features, offered at specific prices, through dialogue with end customers.
In other words, value is defined by the customer and only has meaning if expressed in terms of a product/service that meets their needs at a given price and time.

2nd principle – Identify the Value Stream

The value stream for a given product consists of the entire range of activities required to transform raw materials into the finished product. Value stream analysis always highlights waste by classifying activities into three categories:

• Value-creating activities (all those whose cost can be passed on to the customer)
• Activities that do not create value but are necessary (cannot be eliminated with current product development, order management, and production systems)
• Activities that do not create value and are unnecessary (can therefore be eliminated immediately)

3rd Principle - Let the Flow Glide

After precisely defining the value (first principle), identifying the value stream for a given product or product family, and reconstructing it by eliminating non-value-adding activities through flow mapping (second principle), we must ensure that the remaining value-adding activities form a flow (third principle).

Lean thinking overturns the traditional way of reasoning through “batches,” “functions,” and “departments.” In fact, tasks can almost always be performed more effectively if the product is processed continuously from raw material to finished product.

Continuous flow in production is achieved primarily through radical interventions, which allow for the rapid transformation of production activities necessary to manufacture a product from a batch and queue system to a continuous flow.

4th Principle – Ensure the Flow is “Pulled” by the Customer

When the company (or more generally the organization) has defined the value (for the customer), identified the value stream, eliminated obstacles and therefore waste to ensure uninterrupted flow, then it is time to allow customers to pull the process (i.e., the value stream). Ultimately, customers “pull value from the enterprise.”.

What does that mean? It means acquiring the ability to design, program, and create only what the client wants, when they want it.

5th Principle – Seek Perfection

This last principle may sound presumptuous and should therefore be interpreted in the sense of continuous improvementKaizenIn fact, if the first four principles have been applied correctly, unimagined synergies are created which set in motion a continuous process of reducing times, spaces, and costs.

The application of Lean principles must be systematic and continuous to achieve continuous improvement. In this sense, the fifth principle should be a spur for the incessant application of Lean principles and always serve as a new starting point. Once finished, one must start again to identify new waste and eliminate it.

Lean Thinking is effective because it focuses on maximizing customer value while minimizing waste. By systematically identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce costs, shorten lead times, and enhance product or service quality. This continuous improvement philosophy fosters a culture of problem-solving and adaptability, leading to greater competitive advantage and customer satisfaction.

The Lean approach does not optimize constraints, but removes them, questioning the entire process and focusing on non-value-adding activities and waste. Its application leads to simplified processes, with reduced throughput times and positive impacts on product quality and customer service levels. It therefore translates into a lean and global business logic, which reasons by processes, in the manner of small businesses, i.e., small teams involved in the entire production process, including the customer relations phase.

Lean Thinking also subverts the normal paradigms of business management, thus establishing a new way of managing the company. Problems become opportunities for improvement, seeking solutions if necessary with the support of suppliers who are today business partners and with the adoption of user-friendly technological solutions integrated into daily activities.

Finally, it introduces the concept of Perfection as a search for continuous improvement through a cultural change that leads to constantly recognizing all sources of waste. We must learn to always see waste.

The Lean World Class®: The Evolution of Lean Thinking

Bonfiglioli Consulting pioneered Lean Thinking in Italy with the book “Lean Thinking, the Italian Way” in 1998: we made it concrete and effective thanks to the development of Lean World Class®, our proprietary methodology.
Lean World Class® enables the operational application of the Lean Thinking philosophy across the entire value chain: efficient and effective performance is achieved by applying the 5 principles of Lean Thinking to all Processes of value generation, production, and distribution.

Lean World Class® is based on the World Class Manufacturing (WCM) methodology. WCM has a modular structure consisting of Technical pillars and Managerial pillars that interact with each other to create the necessary conditions for achieving operational excellence. The Managerial pillars are the foundation of Change Management in an end-to-end approach.

Each Pillar is composed of 7 Steps to take the company from a state Reactive (reacts when a problem arises) to one Quote (uses experiences to avoid the recurrence of previously occurred problems, including similar problems under different conditions), and finally to achieve a state Proactive (In accordance with the risk assessment, corrective actions are launched to prevent the possibility of a specific problem occurring). Once the proactive phase is reached, the company tends to become a benchmark.

Guide to Essential Tools and Methods

Resources must develop basic skills on some fundamental tools among the many available within Continuous Improvement methodologies (Technical and Managerial Pillars).