“Lean” manufacturing is an assessment of how effectively your manufacturing processes utilize your invested resources:  the degree of leanness in your operations directly affects the value returned for your investments. All manufacturing processes operate under some degree of leanness.  But every process also has some fat inherent to it, or some degree of under-utilized, wasted resources. Finding ways to minimize that fat, utilizing your invested resources more fully and efficiently and ultimately resulting in more value being returned with less resources being applied, is to make your manufacturing processes more lean.

How can lean manufacturing benefit me?

The first question you need to ask is where you need to see more benefit, or value, from your manufacturing operations.  Following are some common problem/resolution scenarios that, while necessarily generic to accommodate this format, may provide some direction for your initial lean manufacturing considerations:

·   Price pressures in the market.  While manufacturing costs should not determine selling price, being the low-cost manufacturer in your target markets gives you the flexibility you sometimes need to survive, maximizes your profitability, and ultimately allows your business to succeed where others fail.  At Business Consulting Services, we’ve seen the best manufacturing processes implemented at hundreds of companies in dozens of industries around the world.  We can help ensure you become the low-cost manufacturer in your markets – able even to effectively compete with product from Asia.

·   Quality and delivery problems.  Ever experienced the feeling you get when you find ten more boxes of those parts tucked underneath two other pallets or at the back of the rack, six months after the last engineering change was implemented?  Maybe they were rusted, or smashed, or nicked from having sat in inventory and being moved around for so long; or maybe they just had to be repackaged because they were all dusty or the boxes were broken.  Can you remember paying overtime to get them out because you found the problem at the last minute, or they didn’t make the shipment the day you found them.  Have you noticed the box of rejects – your money, by the way – overflowing onto the floor right beside the line where the ‘good’ parts are being sorted and packed?  Have you had to act surprised when the customer called to tell you he had another reject on those parts, when what you really wanted to do was put your head in your hands and just make it all go away?  One of the measurable objectives Business Consulting Services helps you establish and monitor is just how effectively those problems do go away as a result of eliminating the sources and ultimately making your processes more lean.

·   Weak cash flow.  At Business Consulting Services, we don’t slash and dash when it comes to our Clients’ processes.  We help you eliminate the types of waste that result from ineffective process performance:  excessive inventory carrying costs; scrap that you pay to go out in the garbage or for which you get pennies on the dollar from recyclers; down-time where your investments are costing you money rather than making it for you.  All these and more waste factors siphon the life blood from your company and starve your processes from truly necessary, value-adding resources … like payroll, or raw material.  We help your processes learn to work for you rather than against you, and that means not only available cash flow but ultimately increased profit.

·   Employee morale.  There’s an age-old adage that a busy worker is a happy worker.  Business Consulting Services will help you eliminate non-value-adding process steps and develop communication techniques that demonstrate to your staff how they contribute to the overall success of your business.  Studies and experience have shown that people who feel like they are doing good work, and that their work is commensurably appreciated, perform at higher productivity and quality levels.  And people who feel good about their work just make for a happier work environment and more satisfactory investment for you.

There are innumerable potential, value-adding applications for making the manufacturing processes in your business more lean.  When you’re ready, we can review your specific needs and discuss that potential in greater detail.

How does it work?

The first thing we need to determine is how important is making your processes more lean within the larger context of your short- and longer-term goals for your business.  At Business Consulting Services, we don’t sell canned packages (i.e. Six-Sigma, “5-S”, kaizen, value-stream-mapping, etc.) as the panaceas your business has been looking for all these years.  Such methodologies can often become valuable tactics in a lean manufacturing strategy, but making your processes more lean may have higher or lower priority in your overall business plan from year-to-year depending on the specific internal and external factors affecting your business.

As appropriate, we will work with you to identify your key needs for manufacturing efficiency improvements, defining measurable objectives, specific action responsibilities, and arrangements to monitor and review implementation and effectiveness of your lean manufacturing strategy.  Using our extensive, real-world industrial experience, your strategies will be established to ensure realistic opportunities are capitalized in such a way that directly contributes to the success of your business plan.  And along the way, we will train your staff so they can internally establish and manage future lean manufacturing strategies and report performance on a periodic basis appropriate to your personal and business needs.

At Business Consulting Services by David Marsh, we are dedicated to the principle of Helping Your Business Achieve Its Goals._™  For more information or to discuss your specific needs, please email us on the web at info@bcsbydm.com or call 815-728-1710 to schedule an appointment.