Lean Manufacturing Principles

Our earlier experiences with production launch did not have Lean Manufacturing Principles as a driver. In fact, these earliest versions of production launch processes were developed by trying to coalesce best practices from numerous parts of a company. These early versions of production launch processes were effective but they were far from being Lean.

Subsequently, Dennis Harvey had the opportunity to work with key subject matter experts to redefine a production launch process that was applicable to a wider range of products, processes and production volumes. Because he had more than two decades of experience in Lean Manufacturing, many of these Lean Manufacturing Principles were applied. He recognized during this evolution of the process that those best practices that were Lean tended to work best and were easier to implement. Only in the last several years did he turn this around and use Lean Manufacturing Principles that eliminate waste to actually drive improvements into what is now Lean Production Launch.

Some of the more familiar Lean Manufacturing Principles that are quite evident in a Lean Production Launch process are:

• Level the workload
• Standardized work
• Pull systems
• Visual control
• Continuous flow

D. L. Harvey and Associates, Inc. has a proprietary white paper (available to Clients) that articulates how Lean Manufacturing Principles are embodied in our Baseline Production Launch Process. The paper uses the 14 Management Principles defined by Jeffrey Liker in his book, The Toyota Way as a benchmark for defining Lean. All 14 Management Principles are embodied in numerous ways in our Lean Production Launch.