Lean

see also: Etymology of Lean

The school of management of Undertaken known as lean (literally: “thin”, one can translate by “nimble company” or “flexible company”) binds the performance (Productivité, quality) to the flexibility of a company, which must be able to permanently reconfigure the whole of its processes (industrial Réactivité). Holding of the lean seek the performance by the continuous improvement and the continuous improvement by the elimination of the wastings ( muda in Japanese, of which there exist seven categories: excessive productions, useless waitings, transport and handling, useless tasks, useless stocks, movements and defective productions). It is fundamental to make a mental analysis of motricity on the work station and in its surrounding medium in order to bring an answer and an immediate corrective measure on the situation of work. The gesture, the movement and the behavior must be controlled, protected and right. (ergomotricity). The school of management lean finds its sources with the Japan; its most elaborate form is today the Toyota Production System. Adaptable to all the economic sectors, the lean is currently mainly established in industry (and above all in the Automobile).

Basic concepts

The thought lean rests on two principal concepts: the Juste-with-time and the autonomation (or jidoka , sometimes translated at Toyota by “automation with human face”). The tools of Juste-with-time are the production with continuous and drawn flows, the fast change of tools (SMED), the integration of logistics; the tools of the autonomation are the automatic tools of stop of production ( andon ), the methods of elimination of the causes of error ( poka yoke ), of analysis of problem (“Five why”).

The step lean is richer than a simple method of production, and forms a coherent system of complex concepts, articulated with an original practice and means of specific formalization and appropriation; this is why one can use at his place the term of school . Holding of the lean endeavor to teach it, apply it and spread its rules within the industrial community. After a first wave of passion in the years 1970 and 1980 for the “Japanese methods”, the school of the lean was formalized with the the United States in the years 1990 (the term even of “lean” was invented with MIT in 1987) and was popularized by the book Lean Thinking (1996) of James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. Many work followed, among which one can distinguish TEAM Toyota (1996) from Terry L. Bresser and, more recently, The Toyota Way (2004) of Jeffrey K. Liker. This work made it possible to clarify the concepts and the practices lean, to better include/understand the cognitive and social bases on which it rests and to multiply the examples and case studies.

One can distinguish four levels from analysis of the system of thought “lean”: a redefinition of the value produced by a company, the development of a characteristic productive diagram, the development of original managerial attitudes and the formulation of one long-term strategy.

the value :

the added-value of a good must be defined from the point of view of the customer;
the company must ensure a flow without interruption of the value along its line production (in more commonplace terms, one makes “hunting for stocks”).

the diagram of production:

the company produces in “drawing” its production according to the request and not in “pushing” according to the local capacities of production;
the productive tasks are standardized so as to facilitate the continuous improvement by suppression of the noncreative tasks of value;
the company maintains a rich partnership relation with its suppliers and incites them to adopt its methods of production;

the managerial attitude :

the managers and the workers must find and eliminate the fundamental causes from the problems as soon as the latter occur;
each employee is encouraged to reflect and propose improvements of the productive system. This leads to specific building sites of improvement (Kaizen);
management must be held “on the ground”, because only the direct experiment of the crisis situations allows an effective diagnosis ( genchi genbutsu );
the decisions are necessarily adopted by consensus;

long-term strategy :

the company must privilege the stakes of long run by clarifying its total objective and by registering it in a bearable way in the future;
the company must seek excellence permanently.

On these bases, the school of management “lean” is in constant evolution. These last years, it exceeded its initial framework besides - the organization of the production - and is perceived today like a relevant method to fight all the types of inefficiency: the interest for the lean extends quickly to the administrative services ( Lean Office ), to the development of product ( Lean Development ) and even to the data-processing development (nimble methods).

External bonds

Sites of information and university

Lean Project Undertaken of the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of telecommunications (Paris Telecom)

Accompaniment

ManSense Lean & Empowerment

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