Lean Manufacturing
 

Lean manufacturing is a generic process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) but also from other sources. Toyota's steady growth from a small player to the most valuable and the biggest car company in the world made Lean a hot topic in management science. In order to improve overall customer value, the Lean approach focuses on the reduction of the original Toyota 8 wastes.

Lean benefits
Element	Benefit
Capacity	10 to 20% gains in capacity by optimizing bottlenecks
Inventory	Reductions of 30 to 40% in inventory
Cycle time	Throughput time reduced by 50 to 75%
Lead time	Reduction of 50% in order fulfillment
Product development time	Reductions of 35 to 50% in development time
Space	35 to 50% space reduction
First-pass yield	5 to 15% increase in first-pass yield
Service	Delivery performance of 99%

Lean and DMAIC picture above from Lean Sigma Institute
 

Five principles of lean:
 

Principle 1: Accurately specify the value from the customer's perspective for both products and services.
 

Principle 2: Identify the value stream for products and services and remove any non-value-added waste along the value stream.
 

Principle 3: Make the product and services flow without interruption across the value stream.
 

Principle 4: Authorize production of products and services based on the pull from the customer.
 

Principle 5: Strive for perfection by constantly removing layers of waste.
 

Lean Tools
 

Lean is the set of  'tools' that assist in the identification and steady elimination of waste (muda), the improvement of quality, and production time and cost reduction. Below is a picture and links to some of the common Lean Tools.