Speed to Market
The competition for your customers business is great! Customers expect a lot more value added services from the suppliers they choose to give their business. The capability to respond rapidly to customer demand is a key market differentiator for the Lean manufacturer. Because manufacturing response time required to produce products frequently exceeds the customer-quoted lead time, the most common reason given by manufacturers for implementing a Lean operating system is the desire to reduce the long lead times in their factories.
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Working Capital Reduction
One thing is for sure, keeping up with the ever changing demands of customers is no easy task. When confronted with the enormous challenges of pleasing customer demand for faster lead times, configured products, and lower prices, a common strategy for many producers is to just throw money at the problem in hopes of keeping customers happy. For most, this “investment” takes the form of increased inventory levels with a corresponding increase in working capital demand. This defensive money strategy has been a reliable fall-back solution for meeting on-time delivery of customer demand for many years.
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Lower Cost of Quality
Offering a high quality product is no longer a differentiator for today’s manufacturers. A high quality product is just a basic expectation of your customer and is a minimum requirement as your customer considers their purchasing decision. Today’s successful manufacturers know this and their products reflect this realization. While a high quality product is a given for today’s manufacturer, the remaining challenge is controlling the costs of achieving this high level of quality. The Lean technologies introduce quality at the task level for each process as a way to achieve the high level of quality today’s customer require.
Read moreVisual Management
A key benefit for the Lean manufacturer is the ability to assess conditions on the manufacturing shop floor or administrative office through simple observation. A popular name for this capability is “management by walking around – MBWA”. By simply walking through the manufacturing facility, activity in the Lean factory is easy to observe. Supervision requirements of a Lean line are diminished simply because of the simply flow layout of processes. All operators & technicians are trained and certified to perform the standard work at their workstations. Operators and technicians utilize production in-production signals to know what to do and when to do it.
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