Lean manufacturing and its tools

The concept of lean production has been introduced at Russian enterprises not so long ago, in comparison with foreign countries, where the Kaizen philosophy began to be applied in the 1950s. A decade ago, only a third of Russian industrial enterprises were interested in optimizing production. Now the construction of efficient production systems, in addition to discrete industrial production and consulting, is used not only by large, but also by medium-sized companies in many sectors of the economy.

The progenitors of the lean manufacturing system are the auto giants Ford and Toyota. Among foreign companies that successfully apply the principles of Lean production, such as Nike, Textron, Parker, Intel. The beginning of the active use of Lean technologies in our country is considered to be the year 2006, when the First Russian Lin-Forum took place. The pioneers in creating domestic lean manufacturing systems are our famous automobile manufacturers - GAZ and KAMAZ. Among the companies that use Lean optimization systems and techniques, Rusal, Rosatom, Eurochem, TVEL, Sberbank and many others are leading.

The implementation of lean manufacturing logistics at Russian enterprises has state support and is regulated by key standards: GOSTs under the numbers Р 57522-2017, Р 57523-2017, Р 57524-2017, as well as industry recommendations approved by the order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The term "lean manufacturing" or LIN is a semantic translation of the English definitions of "lean manufacturing", "lean production" and a transcription of their abbreviation LEAN.

Lean production is understood as an enterprise management system that can improve the quality of work while reducing costs by reducing losses.

English-Russian translation of the word lean - "skinny, lean, slim." To become so, you should lose excess fat. As applied to the sphere of production, this means that we must get rid of losses, thereby reducing costs. Because lean manufacturing is sometimes called slim.

Three concepts of LIN production

The essence of Lean production was described by G. Ford, who said: "There should be nothing useless in any organization."

In the lean manufacturing system, two aspects are fundamental:

1. It is necessary to involve each employee of the company in optimization procedures.

2. The company should be as focused on consumer interests as possible.

Conceptually, the global production optimization system is based on three principles.

• The Kaizen Philosophy. These are managerial mechanisms based on the idea of ​​continuous quality improvement and its operational and phased implementation. The foundation of the Kaizen strategy is the assertion that there is no limit to the improvement of production processes and each company, regardless of its competitiveness, needs to move forward.

• The Six Sigma concept is based on the fact that production can be controlled using the principle of measurability of any data. Since production processes are measured, they can be monitored, and therefore improved, by analyzing, for example, key performance indicators of KPI. The concept is aimed at making all processes in production predictable and predictable, improving existing ones and creating new optimization algorithms.

• Increase production efficiency, improve the quality of the product, while reducing costs - the objectives of the lean manufacturing system.

Put together, these three concepts show how to gradually and continuously improve the quality of production processes and the final product without incurring unnecessary costs.

Thus, radicalism in production management has been replaced by a comprehensive philosophy that uses the idealistic principles of liberal methods of company management and introduces effective methodologies and tools for improving work.