How Do You Apply Lean Thinking & Management?
Lean thinking has been a popular topic in business education for several decades, but many business owners struggle to understand exactly how to apply lean thinking and management in their organizations. The application of lean thinking requires you to look critically at all levels of your operations, including product and process design, inventory management, and material procurement, and to redesign your operations in a way that reduces waste, slack times, and manufacturing costs. Focus on activities that directly add value to your product or service, and eliminate activities that do not add value. Draw a process flow diagram of your operations to more fully comprehend each step that your product or service takes along the value chain, and redesign processes to eliminate periods of downtime or nonproductive activity. An example of a value- added activity is the welding of an automobile frame to a wheel axis. An example of a non-value-added activity is holding the frame in storage and
