Lean Management - Quality and Just in time principles

Lean management was initiated by Toyota in the 1950s, before spreading throughout the world and into many fields of activity from the 1980s onwards. In response to the economic crisis triggered by the oil crises, many companies began to implement this approach to improve their performance and ensure their long-term survival.

It took two decades for all its aspects to be fully understood, first and foremost the need to change the managerial base of companies in order to get all employees involved in improving quality and efficiency in terms of cost and lead time. It is this requirement for teamwork, carried out as close as possible to where the added value of the product or service is created, that makes Lean management so special.

Lean, also known as Operational Excellence, aims for complete satisfaction of customer needs, while limiting resource consumption to just what is necessary. In addition to the commercial and financial performance it confers on companies practicing it, it is well suited to the sustainable development imperative of our time. To achieve this goal, it is based on two pillars that are treated at the same level: Quality from the start, or Zero Defects, and Just-in-Time.

The scope of the principles proposed by these pillars, and the real meaning of their synonyms Total Quality or Just-in-Time, are often poorly understood. The gap between the correct application of these principles and the practices used in more traditional production methods is very wide, and of course the results obtained are very different. The challenge is made all the greater by the fact that company histories often convey paradigms that run counter to these Lean fundamentals, paradigms that are still relevant today in many companies.

The purpose of this article is to situate the Lean pillars within the overall system, to clarify their fundamentals and to present the essential tools for assessing the level of deployment or improving results.

After a brief reminder of the concepts of the managerial base and continuous improvement, we will detail the pillars of Lean and what distinguishes them from, and even opposes them to, conventional production systems.

We will then present the main analysis and improvement tools that enable us to diagnose the situation, measure the gap between the current situation and the target for achieving Lean objectives, and then initiate the first progress actions.

There's a long way to go from initial observations to visible results. Real-life examples will help illustrate the approach itself and the application of the tools.

The approaches are varied, adapted to the situation of each case, because...