Why do we use lean manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing is an inventory and manufacturing management strategy. That is implement by companies to reduce costs, increase productivity, and gain competitive advantage. Lean manufacturing-organizations techniques are use to move material through company results in a significant reduction in costs and time.

1. What's in lean manufacturing, why do you need Lean?


2. Why aren't all companies not implementing Lean, what are the difficulties and how to overcome them?


3. What are the success factors for Lean implementation in Indonesia, and the initial steps for implementation?

Common problems in each company

Today many company leaders have difficulty changing their organizational culture, precisely the culture of their employees. Corporate leaders are require to be able to increase productivity, make shop floor employees more discipline in work, reduce production costs, until the ultimate goal is to increase company profits.

The desire to change organizational culture is very desirable. Because humans are the main asset of the success of the company to achieve high productivity. More than 50% of the company's efficiency and productivity problems are in shop floor's employees as the company's operational spearhead.

Have you ever experienced a problem like this in daily operational activities: 

• Employees who do not care about the conditions of the workplace


• Employees who are not discipline in time


• Don't care about problems in the work area


• Do not want to make repairs at work


• Not reveal problems in his work area


• Not trying to find his own solutions to problems in each work area


• Too dependent on superiors to take initiatives to improve and make decisions in the workplace not responsive if there are problems in product quality


• Do not care about machines that have begun to show abnormalities and damage always trying to blame others not sensitive to scrap and production costs from the company. There is no communication and coordination between parts no motivation in doing repairs


• looks very busy at work but does not understand the target that is his responsibility, and so on.

Imagine if these problems happen to many people in the company and those problems have accumulate over the years. Then the losses will be very much borne by the company because of this corporate culture. Although company leaders try to repeatedly scold the employee's actions above. But the subordinates are still repeating the same actions.

How to overcome the above problems?

Lean has succeed in many companies in changing organizational culture. Lean's greatness has been proven by various industries. Both for the automotive industry, electronics industry, packaging, semiconductor, food industry, even in the banking, telecommunications, and hospitality industries. Not only limit to Japanese companies, but companies in the US, Europe and Asia have taken enormous profits by implementing Lean.

The Lean concept combines changing people's mindset and changing the work environment. In terms of people, the value of how to work properly and efficiently in order to eliminate waste (activities that do not provide add value) is embed. So that everyone has the same perception of an efficient mindset.

The Lean manufacturing Mindset is known as the slogan: 

Go to Zero. That is zero defect, zero rework, zero downtime, zero stoppages, zero shortage, zero movement, zero motion, zero transportation, zero accident, and others. 

With the same perception and mindset, how to think, how to act, and how someone behaves will follow that mindset. And most importantly, more value from Lean in changing organizational culture is not only trying to change the mindset of people. Because even though the way of thinking is correct but if the environment is not supportive. Then actions that appear will deviate from the embed mindset.

A supportive workplace environment allows people to continue to follow the rails that have been made. Make people easy to see if there is no discipline in the placement of goods, easy to see the problem. It is easy to see the gap in achieving performance on a scoreboard, easy to recognize abnormalities of the machine, easy to recognize the problematic conditions in the process, easy to find everything, easy to get help when encountering problems, easy decision making to make repairs at work, and easy and comfortable at work.

With two fundamental changes both in terms of people's mindset and work environment. The effects on better organizational change and discipline will be more maintain and sustainable. Lean also stimulates the birth of an improvement culture, and everyone is oblige to stop the process. If they find a problem that has an impact on product quality.

What are the benefits of organizations implementing Lean?

The benefits achieve by Lean implementation are very large. Lean aims to create efficiency on all fronts. Very fast production process, better product quality, reduced amount of scrap, more flexible production in responding orders, faster machine setup, less amount of machine downtime, lower production costs, lower maintenance costs, low inventory, less working capital, the same standard of work for all operators, operators who have multi skill competencies, employees who are more passionate about work, increase work satisfaction, and a cleaner, neater, safer and more comfortable work environment.

Seeing the benefits of Lean so great, why haven't all companies applied Lean? What is the difficulty

Many companies that have not implement Lean arise due to various reasons, some do not apply because they do not understand what Lean is and the benefits, there are those who already understand but do not know where to start, some do not know what methods to use, some do not understand how to do the right Lean deployment, there are those who do not know the order in its implementation, and there are also those who think skeptically about the benefits of implementing Lean because it is consider a Japanese corporate culture, and various other reasons. But if you remember the benefits that are so large, then any obstacle must be overcome because of increase production costs, extreme market competition, and also demands from stakeholders, making the Lean implementation program an organizational necessity to implement.

Maybe there are some people in the company who hear Lean is just a piece. Some people think that Lean is only 5S, only Just in Time, only Autonomous Maintenance, only Kaizen, and so on. This perception needs to be change. Because Lean implementation is a total and comprehensive change, not only to the workplace environment, not just to the machine, not just maintenance, not just multiplication, not only reducing scrap costs, but really the whole organization. Changes in mindset dramatically from top management to shop floor. Changes in total in terms of mindset and habits in making continuous improvements (Kaizen).

What are the factors for the successful implementation of Lean in Indonesian companies?

There are two key factors for making successful changes in implementing Lean in any organization. The first and most important of course is the top management commitment. Commitment in providing resources, commitment in monitoring Lean's implementation in each phase of its road map, commitment in seeing Lean as the company's top priority, commitment in monitoring implementation in the field, and enforcing lean discipline in the field. The second and no less important is the method.

Sometimes some companies implement Lean tools that are piecemeal (not a holistic approach) so the results are not sustainable. Some are just applying 5S, some are SMED, there are problem solving tools, and so on ... because they are superficial, they are usually not sustainable. It is better to apply in more limit areas but the application is very deep. Because the main purpose of lean is not only to results but also changes in organizational culture.

What is the corporate culture that has implemented Lean? 

Here are the characteristics of companies that have implemented Lean:

First is a clean culture. 

Companies that implement Lean will always look clean, tidy, a comfortable work area, clean the work area before going home and leave it clean and tidy, the condition of the engine is also maintain, and this is not limit to production areas but also non-production, such as maintenance workshop, warehouse area, and office area.

The second is kaizen culture or continuous improvement. 

People in the work area will actively identify problems in the work area and make improvements. The unique thing is that sometimes employees already know the problem at work and these problems are face every day, even they already know what to do to solve the problem and the solution to the problem is sometimes simple.

But strangely, this was not done immediately. Many things are the cause, some are due to a lack of attention from superiors to subordinates, some are because they do not care, some are because they do not give any value to the person, and there are also because the organization tends to throw responsibility.

In lean manufacturing organizations, the spirit of improvement continues to be foster and campaign. No matter how small the improvements made by shop floor, this will be given an award in the form of recognition or reward even though the value does not always have to be big. But this reward and recognition is the difference between employees who are 'working right' and those who are not (performance based).

So there will always be a difference and this will stimulate everyone to make improvements. 

Then what if the problem is complex and requires a lot of heads to solve it? lean manufacturing facilitate this with the term Small Group Activity. SGA is form by people in shop floor who allocate one hour a week to sit together discussing problem solving brainstorming. Led by a group of leaders to facilitate and if need cross-departmental assistance if the problem is cross functional. The results of the SGA can be account for because it uses clear key performance indicators, so that it can assess whether the results of the improvements are effective in solving problems and all kinds of improvements can be calculate for the company's benefits.

The third is the auto quality culture. 

Here the quality slogan is the responsibility of all employees truly held firm. Every operator who is dealing directly with the process is obliged to stop the production process if he finds a problem in terms of quality. This is because the boss (foreman or supervisor) will come directly to the field if the problem occurs.

Boss holds the principle of being willing to help, trying to solve problems at this level, but if it turns out that it can't, then escalation of the problem will be done to the manager. With a mechanism like this, the slightest quality problems will be seen and endeavor for improvement.

This auto quality action will prevent further losses, where if the operator does not care then the problematic product will continue to be pass to the next process so that when this quality problem is known then the loss will be very large. The principle in auto quality is that the more defects detect in the next process, the losses incurred will multiply ten times the loss. Both in terms of production costs, time, manpower, and so on. The earlier the problem is detect and prevent, the loss can be greatly reduce.

The fourth is a family culture in lean manufacturing. 

lean manufacturing teaches every leader to go to the field often, discuss with subordinates, see the reality in the field. This builds closeness and breaks the bulkhead between levels. It is very possible for a director to go directly to the field and see the situation directly in the field.

See the results of a scoreboard install in production and sign off. This may seem simple, but how big an impact it has on the operator, because psychologically this shows extraordinary attention from the highest boss. Communication within groups continues to be foster with regular discussions every day (communication between shifts).

This will build cohesiveness in the team and good cooperation. This closeness and openness are very important things to establish good communication and smooth process. The spirit of family is truly carry out like parents and children. As boss gives direction to subordinates and helps subordinates to overcome problems. And provide them with the knowledge and skills need. This situation will be very conducive so that daily operational activities will feel very comfortable and vibrant.

Besides the cultural changes above.

There are still many tools in lean manufacturing that are very instrumental in increasing the efficiency and productivity of the organization. Because lean manufacturing also touches efficiency on all fronts, optimizes the number of manpower, multi-operator operators, operators that are competent in caring for machines, more optimum inventory, material flowing, workload leveling, anti-misuse in the production process, and all kinds of improvements in various aspects others.

How to start?

Lean manufacturing is a long journey that was not reach overnight. It takes careful planning to implement. To start the journey it takes an experience person (term Change Agent). Knows what to do, has a planning strategy for clear implementation.

It is able to plan lean manufacturing implementation based on the company's vision and business needs, planning for resource allocation, understand all methods and tools in lean manufacturing such as 5S, visual management, non-value add analysis, autonomous maintenance, small group activity, standard work, autonomous maintenance, SMED, poka yoke, value stream mapping, Gentlemanly, good evening, just in time, mizu shumazi, kanban system, multi skill matrix, etc.

In addition to understanding the tools, it is also capable of conducting workshops involving employees in shop floor so that the planting of mindset is follow directly by action changes in the field. Experience is need so that what is apply is the right thing and goes in the right direction.