"LEAN" principles to Service industry

Lean Manufacturing –

• A way to eliminate waste and improve efficiency in a manufacturing environment
• Lean focuses on flow, the value stream and eliminating muda, the Japanese word for waste
• Lean manufacturing is the production of goods using less of everything compared to traditional mass production: less waste, human effort, manufacturing space, investment in tools, inventory, and engineering time to develop a new product.

Lean and Just-in-Time

• Lean was generated from the Just-in-time (JIT) philosophy of continuous and forced problem solving
• Just-in-time is supplying customers with exactly what they want when they want it With JIT, supplies and components are “pulled” through a system to arrive where they are needed when they are needed.

What is 'Waste'?

• Waste is anything that happens to a product that does not add value from the customer’s perspective
• Products being stored, inspected or delayed, products waiting in queues, and defective products do not add value

Seven wastes: 

• Overproduction – producing more than the customer orders or producing early. Inventory of any kind is usually waste.
• Queues – idle time, storage, and waiting are wastes
• Transportation – moving material between plants, between work centers, and handling more than once is waste
• Inventory – unnecessary raw material, work-in-process (WIP), finished goods, and excess operating supplies
• Motion – movement of equipment or people
• Overprocessing – work performed on product that adds no value
• Defective product – returns, warranty claims, rework and scrap 

5 Principles of LEAN:

1. Value - specify what creates value from the customer’s perspective.
2. The value stream – identify all the steps along the process chain.
3. Flow - make the value process flow.
4. Pull - make only what is needed by the customer (short term response to the customer’s rate of demand)
5. Perfection - strive for perfection by continually attempting to produce exactly what the customer wants