Applying and sustaining Lean

At Vision in Print, we have taken the most effective attributes of Lean, gathered from world-class manufacturing industries, added our own print-based expertise and developed a series of hands-on programmes that will coach your business in the application of lean and best practice techniques. During these programmes, our engineers will help you:

1. Establish what creates value from the customer's perspective
2. Identify all steps that have an impact on that value across the whole value stream
3. Arrange all the steps that truly create value so they occur in logical sequence to optimise efficiency
4. Only make what is required by the customer
5. Strive for perfection by continually removing successive layers of waste

Applied consistently and systematically Lean reduces the use of human effort, capital investment, materials, time and space. It does this by focusing on key areas of waste:

Defects (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing printing defects)
Overproduction (printing more than what is needed, or printing it earlier than needed)
Transportation (moving products further than is minimally required - both internally and externally)
Waiting (products waiting on the next production step, or people waiting for work to do)
Inventory (having more inventory than is minimally required)
Motion (people moving or walking more than minimally required)
Processing itself

Typically, an implementation of Lean with ViP's help will include:

Agree and discuss lean vision
Brainstorm key objectives
Communicate plan and vision
Form the Lean Implementation team (5-7 works best, all from different departments)
Train the Implementation Team in the various lean tools
Select a Pilot Project
Run the pilot for 2-3 months - evaluate, review and learn from your mistakes
Roll out pilot to other factory areas
Evaluate results, encourage feedback

The next stage is to take steps to sustain the benefits gained from lean implementation and develop a culture of continuous improvement.

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