Lean Production and Lean Consumption in 2 Minutes

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Lorenzo Del Marmol

September 17, 2014

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Lean Production and Lean Consumption in 2 Minutes

Lean production and lean consumption are really just one part of the lean analysis process of understanding your customers in relation to your business. What companies need to know about clients in today’s fast-paced, digital world is that the customers are dictating the terms and any business that fails to keep up gets left behind. Lean production and lean consumption should be understood at the same time within the context of your business so you can deliver goods and services in a way that your clients will always go to you and think of you.

But what do consumers want? What businesses should think is that a client goes through almost as much trouble as the business when it comes to a product. There is the actual time invested, effort and money to get to the product and the conscious decision-making the customer has to go through. Lean production and consumption expert companies seek to streamline this whole process so that the clients always decide easily on your firm and your products first.

Essentially, lean production adheres to five principles:

  1. Companies should give customers what they want and not impose what the former thinks is best.
  2. Determine the value of each step of production from conceptualization to point of sale. Eliminate anything that has no value or is not worth the value it adds to your product.
  3. Create continuous flow by shortening lead time and unnecessary inventory.
  4. Depend on customer pull or demand instead of manufacturer push.
  5. Apply the principles again and again in all aspects of your business to achieve perfection.

Businesses often just think that they should deliver high-quality goods at the lowest cost and consumers would be happy. This is where they are gravel mistaken, since these consumption trends point to something different:

  1. Clients enjoy mass customization but experience stress in decision-making and allotting time to decide.
  2. Deregulation of a lot of industries gives consumers freedom but more risk.
  3. Clients are now expected to install, maintain and operate the things they buy.
  4. People have more money to purchase but less time to make good buying decisions.
  5. The world wide web lets customers get involved in various points in production and tracking

As an entrepreneur or CEO, it’s your job to make the lean production principles and consumer trends meld together to create products that respon to trends and at the same time have zero defects and quick turnaround time. This is essentially what your company has to learn in its lean analysis.

Since the customer is such a big part of your production process, it’s important that you work with them. A lot of firms now look to crowdfunding and crowdsourcing for their data and even capital to start making products. More information about crowdsourcing click here.

To implement lean production, here are the things you need to do with your clients:

  1.  Define the purpose of the process. Your manufacturing process must meet the company’s goals and objectives as well as what the customer wants in the finished product.
  2. Design metrics. Good places to start when determining the data you need to see are the production times, cost standards and  customer satisfaction ratings. You can develop more metrics as the process changes and continues.
  3. Focus on the now. It’s easy to get lost in always reaching for higher standards. Since you’ve started with a lean production plan, stick to it. You can always improve once you’ve reached the targeted goals.
  4. Stress test each step. Once you’ve mapped out the manufacturing process, look at each step and test it for efficiency and value. If it isn’t working or creating enough value, take it out of the equation or integrate it with another step.

In the end, lean production has to help producers think like consumers and create products that address the needs and wants of the new consumer trends.

Please share this insight to inspire operational excellence and customer satisfaction in every organisation. It’s free like this ad free article. Thank you :-)

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