Many manufacturers use lean methods to cut costs and improve efficiencies in their business. But ‘lean’ is a very broad concept and the ways that manufacturers ‘go lean’ vary considerably. Here we look at the most common tools and techniques used to bring the advantages of lean into the modern manufacturing workplace.
- Click here for a refresher on lean manufacturing as a concept.
What are lean manufacturing tools?
Lean manufacturing tools are systems and techniques that help organisations better manage waste, improve efficiencies, cut costs and increase productivity. While some require the use of software, others need an investment in hardware, or no investment at all - just a change of internal processes and mindsets.
While they are commonly referred to as ‘tools’, lean manufacturing tools don’t always look like a piece of hardware or a new framework. Indeed, these tools could be several different things, such as:
- New shop floor layouts.
- Software for process automation and centralisation of data.
- Philosophies, concepts and new ways of thinking.
- Big data frameworks.
- Physical tools, like cards, lights and boards.
Lean manufacturing tools can be physical, software-based or even process-based.
Benefits of lean manufacturing tools
Using lean manufacturing tools to solve problems in your organisation has a raft of benefits, including:
- Reduced waste: Lean manufacturers typically produce less waste, both physical (such as obsolete stock, excess materials or defective products), but also time waste.
- Improved quality: Certain lean manufacturing tools help organisations improve their quality of output, for example through better maintenance of equipment, reducing errors and better quality control.
- Increased productivity: Reducing time waste, streamlining workflows and processes, maintaining better equipment uptime, getting more efficient at using raw materials, and all those little productivity boosters add up to a more productive workplace.
- Faster fulfilment: Some lean manufacturers find that they can improve their fulfilment times, delivering products more quickly, through the streamlining processes that come with going lean.
- Reduced costs: Reducing waste, upping productivity and managing inventory better lead to lower costs and better cash flow.
These are some of the most common business benefits associated with going lean, but there can be a whole heap of follow-on benefits which come from them. To use just three examples:
- Improved lead times and quality control can lead to happier customers.
- Happier customers and smoother processes can create more satisfied workers.
- More satisfied workers can lead to greater business innovation and agility.
How many lean manufacturing tools should a business use?
Lean manufacturing generally involves a careful, considered approach to change, deploying only the tools that have a lasting impact on your operation. If it’s not relevant or useful, you don’t need it.
The best way to approach going lean? Start small, with just one change, and slowly scale up from there.
Waste reduction is a common goal of many lean manufacturing tools and systems.
The top 25 most common lean manufacturing tools
Lean manufacturing and waste reduction tools
1. Lean Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a set of methodologies first devised by Motorola in the 1980s, designed to improve the quality of Motorola’s products to the point where defects were so rare as to be statistically insignificant.
When combined with lean practices, it becomes Lean Six Sigma.
Six Sigma uses the DMAIC cycle to collect data on business processes then use evidence-based decision making to reduce variation and defects. With the lean add-on, data is also used to reduce waste and eliminate tasks which add no value.
DMAIC is…
- Define the problem and set goals.
- Measure the current state.
- Analyse the root cause of the problem.
- Improve using solutions designed to address the root cause.
- Control the process by determining its success and ensuring sustainability.
2. Kanban
Kanban is a card-based system which visualises a workflow by putting it on a physical or digital board - typically split into the different stages of production.
Kanban systems can be offline – literal boards with jobs cards that move as work stages are completed – but more often involved digital boards.
Software tools like Trello and Asana offer general kanban functionality, while software used by manufacturers, like Unleashed, include Kanban views that allow the progress of assembly jobs to be managed visually.
- Learn more: 8 Examples of Kanban in Lean Manufacturing
Kanban production software is an easily deployed lean manufacturing tool.
3. Andon
Andon is a visual and sometimes audible alert system designed for your shop floor and warehouse staff.
Through the use of signal lights, information displays, flashing symbols, buzzers, alarms and/or automated sensors, the Andon system notifies staff about the current status of production, and whether or not there’s a problem requiring someone’s attention.
Using this system, staff should be able to move swiftly in the event of an issue, halting production and tackling the problem so that production can resume swiftly and efficiently.
- Learn more: Visual factory guide for manufacturers
Just in time processes are one of the most common lean manufacturing tools.
4. Just-in-Time (JIT)
In JIT methodology your aim would be to only stock goods and materials as you need them, minimising inventory holding costs and thereby waste.
With its ‘pull’ approach to manufacturing the production process under JIT is triggered by customer demand. If you have swift-enough suppliers you can pull inventory as customers place orders, or else you’d try to forecast in advance when demand is likely to rise and fall, ordering the right amount of inventory for those moments – and no more.
JIT is best used in combination with other systems (like Kanban), plus good inventory management software and efficient supply chain relationships.
5. Takt Time
Takt time is a metric which measures how many units you will need to produce each day to meet customer demand, without overstocking or under delivering. This aligns production with demand, and gives your team a goal to reach on the shop floor.
Calculating it is fairly simple:
Takt time = Available production time / Customer demand, in units
Continuous flow in lean manufacturing sees production smoothed and standardised.
6. Continuous Flow
Think of Continuous Flow as the opposite of batch-based manufacturing. Here, goods are moved through the production process a unit at a time, creating a constant (i.e. continuous) flow of goods from raw materials through to packing and shipping.
The use of Continuous Flow can improve quality and reduce lead times, namely because defects are caught early (rather than having to wait for an entire batch to finish before QCing), and customers get their goods more quickly. Some manufacturers also find it allows them to be more agile, flexing to suit market conditions and changing customer demand.
7. Heijunka
Heijunka, meaning ‘levelling’ in Japanese, is a production management system which - like Continuous Flow - evens out production over a set period of time. So, instead of trying to over-produce certain products to anticipate demand, while under-producing others, you would spread everything out and produce at a constant rate.
A Heijunka lean manufacturing system can help reduce inventory holding costs and better utilise factory resources by producing at a constant, level rate regardless of day-to-day demand. If demand changes (or you’re using a pull-based system like Kanban), it’s fairly simple to adjust the flow of production to match.
8. Cellular Manufacturing
In Cellular Manufacturing, your workstations are grouped together to create mini-factories within your larger shop floor. Instead of each department owning a specific part of the production process (i.e. painting, soldering, assembly) with functionally similar equipment sitting next to each other, each ‘cell’ is equipped to handle the complete production of a particular part, sub-assembly or family of products.
The goal here is to reduce travel time between workstations and improve efficiency at the same time. If each cell can produce its own goods end to end, the materials involved in that production don’t need to travel very far each day.
9. Standardised Work
Standardised Work in the lean manufacturing context is essentially the writing down of your most efficient way to operate. It establishes the exact processes and best practices necessary to produce your products in the ideal way while creating the least waste.
To document your procedures in such a way, you would need to think about:
- Each step in the production process.
- Required techniques for performing each step.
- Required Takt Time to meet customer demand.
- The amount of raw materials required.
- Relevant safety guidelines.
After you’ve got your plan in hand, you can use it to train your people, set expectations and measure success.
Minimising equipment downtime is important in lean manufacturing.
10. Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)
SMED is all about quickening your equipment changeover speeds - the goal being to bring it all down to single-digits, less than 10 minutes.
To bring those setup speeds down, you’ll generally need to think about a few things:
- Comparing setup operations which must be performed while a machine is stopped (called ‘internal setup’) with setup which could occur while it’s operating (‘external setup’).
- Figuring out if any internal setup steps could be modified to be external.
- Streamlining changeover steps and eliminating non-essential operations.
- Standardising the procedure so it can be practised and improved upon.
11. Muda
Muda isn’t so much a lean manufacturing tool as a concept to always keep in mind while using other tools. It means ‘waste’, and refers to anything that does not provide value to the customer.
Every business produces different types (and amounts) of muda, but these are some of the common ones:
- Producing excess inventory.
- Purchasing excess materials.
- Idle time.
- Transportation.
- Overly complex or inefficient processes.
- Unnecessary movement of goods or operators.
- Defects.
- Underutilised talent.
To go lean, you will need to tackle all of these as much as possible.
Lean manufacturing problem solving tools
12. Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
A value stream is the specific production steps which must be taken to turn raw materials into your products - from the customer order or concept design through to delivery. Value Stream Mapping (VSM), therefore, is the process of analysing those value streams, designing the most efficient pipelines and looking for ways to improve and optimise.
The goal here is to create a process map, like a flowchart, of each value stream in your business, checking it thoroughly to identify any issues - bottlenecks, muda, common customer concerns, etc.
From here you may be able to suggest new shop floor layouts, necessary equipment upgrades, new training plans, alternate suppliers and so on.
13. Poka-Yoke
Poka-Yoke means ‘mistake-proofing’, and it is a process for finding defects early and rectifying them before they become a more costly concern.
This process prioritises prevention over repair, using tools and controls to prevent errors from occurring.
These tools can be physical things, like a tray designed to hold specific screws, colour-coded plugs that only fit with their correct pair, or software pop-ups to alert users they’re about to make a mistake.
Or they could be more of a process, such as Value Stream Mapping, root cause analysis (see point 24 below) and Standardised Work.
14. Jidoka
Jidoka is an automation concept meaning ‘autonomation’. It is generally designed to utilise automated processes which stop when an error occurs, sending a signal to human operators to come and assist rather than continuing on to produce defective products.
The main benefit of Jidoka is that it makes problems immediately visible. When an issue is automatically detected, it can be fixed promptly, pairing nicely with other manufacturing tools like Andon. The loss in machine up-time can be more than made up for by reducing the loss of discovering defective batches.
To offer some examples of Jidoka in action, consider:
- A textile loom which automatically stops when it detects a broken thread (this is actually the original Jidoka example, from Toyota in the 1900s!)
- A robotic car windshield installer which ceases production if it detects a misalignment or defect in the glass.
- Software which won’t let you close a spreadsheet without saving it first.
5S is a popular lean manufacturing methodology.
5S lean manufacturing tools
5S is one of the most popular lean manufacturing frameworks on the planet, incorporating five tools/steps built to help better organise and standardise a workplace. Those are:
- Sort
- Straighten
- Shine
- Standardise
- Sustain
15. Sort
Originally known as Seiri, the Sort phase is all about identifying necessary and unnecessary things around the shop floor (i.e. components, parts, obsolete tools) and decluttering them.
It uses tools like inventory checklists to quantify what should or shouldn’t be there, and visual guides such as red tags to note objects for removal.
16. Straighten
Also known as Set to Order, and originally Seiton, the Straighten phase is all about simplification - reordering what’s left into a more efficient, easier-to-use space.
Simple concepts work well here, like colour coding, tagging/labelling and the use of storage containers or visual boards (a good opportunity to implement Andon or Kanban). Additionally, many organisations use this step as a chance to redo their shop floor layout entirely with an eye for improved ergonomics and productivity, for instance:
- Moving frequently used tools to live near the place they are required.
- Centralising spare components.
- Restructuring into a cellular layout.
17. Shine
Originally Seiso, the Shine step is the cleaning phase. While not the most glamorous or exciting work, Shine is still a very important opportunity for your business - making use of this new decluttered, reorganised space to tackle dirt, grime and old rust.
This job should not be assigned only to custodial staff, but to the people who operate in a particular space. It gives staff better ownership of their area, and it can be safer too - who knows how to work with the equipment best than the people who use it?
Take Shine as a chance to hunt for maintenance issues, too. It’s likely your staff will find hidden cracks, leaks, dents and misalignments which can then be addressed.
18. Standardise
Standardise, or Seiketsu, will help you turn the short-term work performed in earlier phases into a cyclical plan which can be repeated time and again in future to ensure enduring benefit to your business.
Here you will devise standard operating procedures and create a new set of instructions - perhaps visual aids too - to make sure they can be performed again in future more easily. You may also choose to create new training programs or add these procedures to your onboarding steps to keep all staff up to date on their responsibilities.
It’s important that these procedures are written down and someone is given ownership, so there is at least one person in your organisation tracking when tasks have been done, auditing to ensure adherence to the procedures, and helping design visual aids or other tools to make work easier.
19. Sustain
Sustain, aka Shitsuke, is the final step. This step is here to make sure that your procedures written down during the Standardise phase are turned into a cycle of continuous improvement.
5S is not meant to be one-and-done. By using audits, new KPIs and performance metrics, new training and onboarding, and top-down management support, you can feed the end of the 5S cycle back into the start so that your organisation repeats these steps regularly.
For instance, you may find that if you declutter your workspace, over time staff will clutter those spaces again – perhaps even worse than before, because now there’s more space to fill. This could cause an even bigger mess than you had previously, unless you build those good habits by repeating the steps.
Continuous improvement lean manufacturing tools
20. Kaizen
Kaizen translates to “change for the better”. If you’re already familiar with the concept of continuous improvement, you’ll be well placed to adopt Kaizen - self-improvement is what it’s all about!
Two of the core principles of Kaizen are:
- Make small, incremental changes rather than radical changes.
- Get everyone involved - from the top to the bottom of your organisation.
You’ll find the philosophies of Kaizen fit nicely into many other lean manufacturing approaches, as it can turn them from a one-off productivity boost to a new problem-solving culture which uses data and a standardised approach to constantly hunt for optimisations.
21. KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are certainly no new concept, but this time-honoured tool has a huge benefit for lean manufacturing specifically.
KPIs are often used to measure the performance of staff over time. By setting clear goals which indicate what your organisation feels is high-quality work, you can identify which employees meet those standards and which need further training.
Consider adopting KPIs for your entire organisation from a ‘going lean’ point of view. Things to consider measuring include:
- Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) - see below.
- Lead time.
- Inventory turnover.
- COGS targets.
- Defects detected.
- Safety incidents.
Learn more: 17 Inventory Metrics & KPIs You Need to Know
22. Gemba
Gemba is a Japanese lean manufacturing concept, translating to “the real place”. It is another philosophy more so than a specific tool, encouraging higher-level staff or any staff detached from day-to-day production activities to go down to the shop floor every so often and see what’s happening.
This can be achieved with what’s called a ‘Gemba walk’. Here, you would directly observe a particular process, talk to the relevant employees to gather information on said process, learn how it all works to ensure your understanding, identify any problems raised, and brainstorm solutions based on the data gathered.
For example, you might find out that your assembly team is spending more time idling each day than you’d like because they have to wait for materials to arrive from the workstation upstream. As a solution, you might move those to stations to be closer together.
23. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Your OEE score is a measure of equipment performance over time, which can be invaluable in identifying problems on the shop floor.
To calculate it simply, you’ll pick a time period and identify a few factors:
- The total number of units manufactured without defects (known as your ‘Good Count’)
- The theoretical time to manufacture one unit at max speed (known as ‘Ideal Cycle Time’)
- The total time you expect your equipment to be producing (known as ‘Planned Production Time’).
OEE = (Good Count * Ideal Cycle Time) / Planned Production Time
An OEE score of 100% suggests that your systems are all working perfectly, making exactly what you need at the right time and with minimal defects (or machine downtime).
24. Root cause analysis
A root cause analysis prioritises hunting for and fixing the source of a problem rather than performing temporary fixes - it’s the difference between treating symptoms and treating the disease that causes them.
The steps for a root cause analysis will likely be familiar, especially if you’re using Six Sigma methodologies. They are:
- Describe the problem.
- Gather data on what’s happening.
- Brainstorm potential causes.
- Drill down to find the specific root cause(s).
- Implement corrective actions.
25. Bottleneck Analysis
Your bottlenecks are the steps in your value stream which take the longest time. Here, production slows down because a particular step can’t keep up. A bottleneck analysis, therefore, is simply a process to hunt for those weak points and determine relevant optimisations.
Performing a bottleneck analysis is not too different from a root cause analysis or Value Stream Mapping. It includes:
- Mapping the entire value stream.
- Measuring performance at each stage (using metrics like cycle time, resource utilisation or defect rates).
- Identifying the bottlenecks.
- Assessing the impact of each bottleneck and prioritising those with the greatest impact.
- Using tools like root cause analysis to identify corrective actions.
- Implementing the corrective actions.
You can of course then go on to loop that feedback into a cycle of continuous improvement, performing bottleneck analyses on a regular basis to keep an eye on changing conditions in your business.
Common lean manufacturing software tools
1. Inventory management software
Unleashed is a popular cloud-based inventory management system offering manufacturers real-time visibility into their stock levels and resource planning. It also has features such as kanban production, supplier management, Bills of Materials, sales order management, data reporting and integrations with other software tools.
- Learn more: Benefits of Unleashed Software
2. Lean enablement software
The LeanSuite is what’s called lean enablement software, that is, software designed specifically to help business operators go lean. It offers a variety of functions, including maintenance scheduling, project planning, communication tools, process automation, performance tracking and so on.
There’s also Tulip, an app-building platform which allows manufacturers to design apps for their shop floor (based on lean principles) without needing to write code. For example, some manufacturers use Tulip to implement Andon and Poka-Yoke apps.
3. Big data and data intelligence
Products like Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Zoho and Unleashed BI Vision are great tools for manufacturers looking for a data-based approach to going lean.
These software packages are powerful data gathering, visualising and reporting platforms, helping users generate useful insights about their business and share them with others in a format which - critically - can be easily understood.
How to choose between different lean manufacturing tools
When it comes time to decide what tools you want to implement (and which software to go alongside them), there are a few things for you to consider.
First, some specific factors that you need to write down:
- Your company goals - what do you actually want to achieve?
- Current challenges faced by your business.
- Your expected future need based on current growth.
- Existing software that you’ll need to integrate with new software.
- Current bottlenecks.
Then, there are a few broader factors to think about:
- Your budget for change.
- Current company size.
- Expected growth.
- Current IT expertise/capacity.
If you plot all of those out, you should be able to determine exactly what you want to achieve and why, plus the factors which might affect your success. From there, you can prioritise your greatest needs and pick the tools which will help you with those needs - remembering to start small and scale up over time.
