Triangular Consulting helps companies cut out the waste, leave the essentials and make processes lean.
In 2022, we expect to receive our products faster, using less effort and with more value than at any other time in history. To remain competitive, businesses are reviewing their manufacturing operations to focus only on what creates value and eliminating the waste.
There are many ways to strategically get your growth back on track, but let’s focus on one that is simple, within your control, and ultimately affects your bottom line.
Cut out the Waste
- Identify anything that may fall into one of the eight waste categories. Look at your processes, tasks, activities or items. (Figure 1.)
- Arrange your findings into ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’. Although not truly value-adding, some wastes can be a necessary evil for converting raw materials into goods, so it is important to understand which wastes can be eliminated and which of them affect your core processes.
- Eliminate ‘unnecessary’. Reduce, substitute and control ‘necessary’. For control, you strive to maintain levels of input and resources in your production system. Additionally, this is an opportunity to execute waste reduction initiatives that involves everyone.
Leave the Essentials
Now that you are left with a lighter system, this is a good indicator to say that you’re left with only value-adding processes. Except for the necessary activities that will be reviewed through continuous improvement.
“In the fast-paced manufacturing industry, being competitive not only means you sell a great product, but it means your production systems are in order.”
Make Your Process Lean
What’s important here is that your approach to getting your growth back on track is not successfully executed overnight. It is the incremental, continuous improvements that are made over an extended period (we like to say that it’s a lifelong process). So, how can we make our processes lean?
Here are five points that collectively form a solid foundation for building continuous improvement systems in your facility.
- Document your current system, otherwise, there wouldn’t really be something to continuously improve.
- Endurance and adaptability will always win the race (Yes, hand-in-hand).
- Stop putting out fires. Start finding the root causes and developing solutions.
- Always involve the process owners when solving problems and developing solutions.
- Problems are usually evident when they are immediately effective, but if they are small enough, their effects easily go unnoticed. When measured, 10 minutes waiting time of the welder to receive a job specification every morning becomes evident when you actively probe the process to continuously improve it. That’s 2% of your welding workforce time and money lost to a process considered fit simply because it works.
In the fast-paced manufacturing industry, being competitive not only means you sell a great product, but it means your production systems are in order. They are constantly being innovated, becoming more sustainable and more efficient. Working lean as mentioned is a lifelong journey. It requires the vision of the leader and the effort of all. Focus consistently on the above strategy to get back on track and strive for the best possible efficiency with minimal waste.
All manufacturers want their production operations to be built on efficient systems. They all want to beat break-even. But time is an asset that they are strategic within the way it is used. As a result, and as businesses, they invest their time in the things that matter most to their customers.
Triangular Consulting does the same. They focus on the things that drive their clients forward, especially when it comes to Production Operations. While you focus on the needs of your customers, they focus on yours, transforming your business through production, product quality, and your bottom line, creating the change needed for an efficient future.