What Can Lean do for your Business?

Many people have heard of Lean Techniques and Lean Manufacturing, but few have a deep understanding and fewer still would know how to begin a Lean Implementation within their own organisation.  Yet this is a a proven method of saving time, money and improving efficiencies within businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Since Lean manufacturing was first implemented many decades ago by Toyota, many companies all over the world have made enormous productivity and quality gains by adopting this methodology. Lean manufacturing techniques dramatically reduce batch sizes and stock, whilst increasing flexibility and responsiveness to customers. The gains are not a one off; once a Lean culture is established, continuous improvement means that an organisation is always looking for ways to improve its processes and reduce waste. The suitability of the techniques are not limited to manufacturing processes, with many service environments benefitting from the enormous reductions in waste. Post credit crunch, many banks have active process improvement functions utilising these techniques.

Now, perhaps more than ever before, companies aiming to be as competitive as possible while the economy leaves recession, need  to adopt Lean methodologies to reduce waste, increase productivity and increase customer satisfaction. The perceived wisdom, that UK industry can never compete with manufacturers in countries with very low labour costs, is shown to be untrue by the presence of Toyota, Honda and Nissan factories in the UK. In cases such as these, competitive advantage is not gained by decreasing the cost of manpower, but by effective management of  processes within the organisation. If Toyota can build quality products in Britain competitively, there is no reason why UK industry cannot learn to do so.

When Lean techniques are implemented in conjunction with Six Sigma, the gains achievable become enormous. Six Sigma was devised originally by Motorola, as a way of packaging statistical methods and quality tools that had been around for many years and deploying them within a structured quality improvement process which has the customer at its centre. Six Sigma’s strength is in tackling complex problems where numerous process inputs and output variation means that issues have run for many years without solution. Over time, this robust problem solving methodology solves long term problems, and enables the smooth running of a Lean system. 

Like many major organisational changes, when implementing Lean Six Sigma it is often difficult to know where to start and how great the magnitude of change is required. Using a business diagnostic tool provides a natural starting point. The tool not only gives an accurate snapshot of how Lean your business is, it will show you where improvements are needed the most as well as which functions and activities are already strong. It can also assist with winning the buy-in of the people within the organisation, normally the hardest part of any change program.

At Taylored Assessments we have launched our latest Insight Diagnostic based around these lean principals.  It will provide an organistion with a snapshot of how lean they are, and clearly show them where particular focus needs to be placed in order to become more efficient and reduce waste.

It is a highly cost effective way of taking the first step into Lean Six Sigma, or ideal for those organisations who adopt the Lean ethos and want to constantly evaluate how they are doing and where additional savings can be made.

Talk to TUK for Intelligent Business Insights