LEARNINGS

Recession and depression are part of Business cycle. Firms apply all
sorts of strategies to survive this tide. When asked how? - These firms often
explain the clever ways in which they eliminated jobs, diverted the revenues
from the bottom-end customers and drained profits from the top end
suppliers. These were often thought to be the application of the concept of
lean. Featherlite has invested a lot in state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies and has an
active research and development wing. The firm even has a Kaizen team conducting regular
meetings and implementing kaizen in the production process. With the company in continuous
strive for perfection, one would expect that their non-value added time will be less compared to
the value added process times. But the overutilization as well as underutilization of machinery
and labour would results in Muda. One cant just finish the work early before the allotted time. If
one does so, it would also result in piling of inventory which is another form of waste.
The production process is not the only one that generate Muda. The entire approach of
Lean Thinking must start from the suppliers to the final stage where the product is handed over
to the customer. Whatever benefits a firm, in terms of improving its efficiency gets reflected only
when each and every stakeholder be in-line to the firms objective. For example, if a firm
produces finish goods in flow approach rather than traditional batch method, the firm reap the
benefit only when the intermediate products suppliers also follow the flow approach. Otherwise
the intermediate product suppliers after producing the necessary intermediate products would
dump the batches to the needed firm again resulting in another form of Muda - Inventory.
Lean Thinking offers the perfect solution to Muda. It provides a means to specify value,
sequence of value creation activities and to processes these without any interruptions according
to ones request and continuously improving it to attain perfection. It provides instant feedback
on ones effort to translate Muda into value. Its not about downsizing or job destruction, its a
means to creation of new work.
The five dimensions to Lean are:
1. Specify Value
2. Identify Value Stream

3. Flow
4. Pull
5. Perfection
Lean thinking has always been a little bit difficult to understand and counterintuitive which
results in firms not taking that leap towards lean. The definition of value changes from customer
to customer. It is mandatory for firms to dig deep to get hold on customers requirement.
Value stream maps helps differentiate between value added activities and non-value added
activities of a process. There has always been a common illusion that almost all task can be
successfully accomplished when products are worked out continuously by keeping the
department members completely engaged and high speed machines made to run hard.
Value stream mapping is one of the powerful tools in identification of the non- value added
activities in the production process. It requires only the use of pen and paper as the basic need.
Value Stream Mapping is thus an ideal planning tool to optimize results of eliminating waste.
Flow is always about smart way rather than the hard way. Quality is zoomed always
when pull thinking and flow are put in place together. Perfection is infinite and not a one-time
ticket to ideal state.
Its a proven fact that Lean is an antidote to Muda(waste). But, people are still stuck with
traditional batch and queue model.