For lean manufacturers, waste is the enemy. It is viewed as a roadblock to productivity and customer satisfaction. Defined in broad terms, lean manufacturing is a performance-based strategy for maximizing customer value, while improving profit for the company. The goal of lean is to eliminate waste and non-value-added steps at all points in the manufacturing process. To accomplish this, lean often employs pull-based inventory strategies and implements continuous improvement practices across the enterprise.
What lean manufacturing requires is a sustained, long-term commitment from the entire organization. Lean’s tenets must be championed by top management and practiced by every employee. In other words, to be successful, lean must be a fundamental part of a company’s corporate culture.
But commitment is only one variable. To implement lean change, a company must also have processes in place that are capable and predictable. Quality is a fundamental process in lean manufacturing.
To go lean, management and lean teams must be able to identify problems, isolate the cause and implement improvement. Manufacturing plants must quickly obtain the right parts from suppliers, and they must be able to trust the quality of those parts. Equipment and machines must be calibrated and maintained to prevent line downtime.
Attempting to achieve lean improvements without an effective quality management process in place is a wasted effort. Therefore, quality management must be an integral part of the lean process.
In this whitepaper, we talk about:
- What is lean manufacturing
- How AI is making quality management a leaner process
- Supplier’s role in lean manufacturing
- How ComplianceQuest EQMS helps in achieving lean improvement
- And more
