Optimizing Your Manufacturing Processes with Technology

Striving For Continuous Improvement:

How Software Solutions Assist In Lean Manufacturing

For manufacturing companies, the principles of lean production can provide the foundation for an optimized and effective process that delivers maximum value to customers and reduces company waste. The systems within an organization are just as critical to the success of lean manufacturing as the employees. Having the right software can be the difference between achieving a lean operation and falling short for many manufacturers. While full scale ERPs are expensive and often complicated to use, custom software can pose a lean technology solution for companies of any size.

What is Lean Manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing consists of two parts: an ideal and the means by which to implement that ideal. Without both elements, lean manufacturing cannot be successful.

By adhering to a lean manufacturing philosophy, businesses perpetually seek to maximize efficiency while delivering the greatest possible value to its customers. Lean manufacturing aims to provide the customer with exactly what they need at precisely the moment at which they need it. To provide your customer with excess creates waste; to provide them with a product that falls short of their needs will sink your business.

Lean manufacturing cannot thrive on an ideal alone. It requires hands-on application, and that’s where kaizen comes in. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means “change for the better,” and refers to the cycle of continuous improvement that transforms lean manufacturing from an ideal to an effective, practical ideology. Kaizen can be applied not only to products, but to people, tools, and workflows.

The Principles of Lean Manufacturing

There are five core principles that comprise the foundation for a successful lean operation.

Pinpoint Value

The first principle of lean manufacturing is to identify the value of your product or service to your customers. Establishing an understanding of how your products or services meet your customers’ needs will help inform your perspective of what your customers want. Armed with this information, you can begin to develop your products or services with their needs in mind, removing unnecessary and underutilized features, reducing wasteful steps in the process. Developing products that exclusively serve your customers’ needs allows you to price based on value, which is typically more profitable.

Understand the Value Stream

Secondly, lean manufacturing requires an understanding of the value-stream of your product. A value stream is essentially the entire life-cycle of a product or service, from ideation to disposal and every step in between. It is usually during the process of mapping out the value stream of your product that you can begin to identify waste and begin making changes to help reduce or eliminate it. Developing a thorough understanding of your value stream allows you insight into areas of opportunity within your business.

Establish a Flow

The third principle of lean manufacturing is developing an efficient flow. Your product or service should move from creation to distribution and along the value stream without interruption. Blockages in your flow create waste. By identifying and addressing potential blocks, you can effectively minimize inventory, reduce your production time, and get your product or service into the hands of your customer at exactly the right time.

Use Pull-Based Production

Traditional manufacturing relies on the purchase of supplies to trigger production. These systems are easy enough to create, but often lead to unnecessary inventory and extra work. Conversely, a pull-based system begins with a customer’s order arriving in the shipping department, signaling that it’s time for a new product to be made. A pull-based system for production dramatically reduces waste, eliminates errors, and often increases output.

Aim For Perfection

While true perfection is impossible, it is certainly possible to get closer and closer. Seeking perfection means that your company must continually refer to these principles in order to keep improving. This is where kaizen comes into play. Practicing Kaizen through small, incremental changes leads to significant long term change. Though you may never achieve perfection, applying the kaizen philosophy over time will help your business get close.

The principles of lean manufacturing are intended to guide members of your company as they strive for continuous improvement. However, these principles cannot be effective if it’s the sole responsibility of one part of your team to implement them. Lean manufacturing should be applicable to every employee within your company, regardless of their title, role, or daily task. Creating a culture that values and practices striving for better is the responsibility of every member of your organization.

How Can Software Solutions Assist In Lean Manufacturing?

The answer is in the kaizen.

The software development life cycle goes hand in hand with the five lean principles, kaizen always top of mind. Just like lean manufacturing is a cycle of continuous improvement aimed at achieving perfection, the same applies to software development.

Software development begins with creating a plan for what the final product should be that is followed through in the design stage, and then executed by developers. Once the software is built, beta testing begins. If the software doesn’t perform as expected, the cycle begins again with a return to the planning stage. It is only once the final product is perfected that the software is released to the client and then to the end user. However, because the process is a cycle, not a straight line, it does not end once the product is launched. Software requires ongoing support and as clients begin to use it and provide feedback, developers eagerly await the opportunity to make improvements. Software development, like lean manufacturing, is an endless loop of striving for incremental improvement on the road to perfection.

Lean manufacturing requires an all-hands-on-deck mentality from every employee in order to be effective, but lean manufacturing doesn’t rely solely on the kaizen of people. It relies on the kaizen of tools and systems that employees use to perform their jobs. It relies on lean technology.

The Zelifcam Approach

Zelifcam prides itself on being experts at workflow automation and we approach software development the same way you approach lean manufacturing: We find opportunities for kaizen.

Zelifcam takes the time to embed itself in your manufacturing company so that we can understand the processes and workflows you already have in place. Only then can we begin to identify opportunities for improvement and build custom software solutions to get you one step closer to perfection.

We have extensive experience in developing software tailored to manufacturing companies of every size and scope. Zelifcam has created tools for label printing, audit logs, barcode scanning, and pull systems.

While larger manufacturing companies can certainly benefit from lean production and custom software solutions, it’s the smaller companies that often see the biggest results. Making production more efficient and delivering the maximum value to your customers creates the ability to scale your business when your pull system signals the need.

Implementing a full scale ERP system can be costly and complicated, but with Zelifcam it’s no longer a necessity. Lean production is possible and more affordable than many would imagine. With Zelifcam’s custom software solutions, you can turn your company’s ideals into a practical ideology, eliminating waste and keeping your customers coming back for more.