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firestar967  
#1 Posted : 05 January 2011 16:09:38(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
firestar967

I’ve been asked to take part in a LEAN event looking at our working practices, this does involve competency and training so does have a health and safety issue to it. I am not 100% up on this LEAN and am hopeful if anyone can offer me some information on it (Have got some basis knowledge on it but not enough) or point me in the right direction I would be grateful.
paul.naysmith  
#2 Posted : 05 January 2011 16:44:04(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
paul.naysmith

Congratulations on working on making your business Leaner. I've been working with "Lean" for many years, applying it all over the world, and simply it is a continuous improvement tool that identifies waste or inefficiencies, to create a better way of working. I would suggest that someone on your team (hopefully the team leader) is either an expert or proficient in facilitating the team, and would be an excellent support for your questions. There is a huge amount of information out in the Internet from the Quality sector (see recommendations below), for my distilled version the term "Lean" came about when American researches went to Toyota in the 1980's to understand why they made such better and cheaper cars than in the USA. Womack (the researcher) published his research in the book entitled "the machine that changed the world", all he could do was refer to the way Toyota made cars was "lean", with every process being so more efficient than what the Americans or Europeans could do. There is lots of books on the subject, most popular being the "Toyota Way" and the "Lean for Dummies", are of low cost and easily picked up from most big book shops. I would suggest looking up the Chartered Quality Institute's website (theCQI.org >Knowledge Hub>Tools and resources>Factsheets>Continual improvement), the Toyota Production system (http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/index.html) the six sigma website (http://www.isixsigma.com/ and have a look around the website). Good luck, its hard work, however the payback is huge.
firestar967  
#3 Posted : 05 January 2011 17:51:52(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
firestar967

Thanks Paul, just what I was hoping for.

Kind regards
bob youel  
#4 Posted : 06 January 2011 07:26:31(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
bob youel

Dont forget that much of what the Japanese initially learnt was via Englishmen & some Americans who were not being listened to in their home countries. Additionally the Japanese put their own philosophies of improvement etc in with the processes learnt

Most importantly they invested today to help tomorrow a thing we generally [not everybody] do not do now we only think of immediate profit above all things!
smitch  
#5 Posted : 06 January 2011 09:30:29(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
smitch

A look at http://www.manufacturing...co.uk/text.asp?PageId=89 may also be of some help.

HTH

Steve
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