A research on implementation of lean tools across verticals in manufacturing

Abstract

With the rapidly growing demand for products in the market, manufacturing has become a crucial part owing to the value addition that it creates. Customer will opt to go for the manufacturers who provide better value for money which is the very basis of sustainability. Implementing Lean methodology would complement the purpose. Lean methodology basically tries to reduce the waste in the process to finally result in process involving mostly value addition to customer. In other words, Lean means ‘producing more and more with less and less resources’ using various Lean Tools. There are various Lean tools each meant for a specific objective such as identifying the Non-Value-added Activities, workflow improvement, reduction in the variation of the output, Lead Time reduction and much more. Every manufacturing industry will have a wide-variety of challenges. This paper attempts to map a high-level picture of the various lean tools used across multifarious domains while attempting to co-relate and compare the choice in a relevant fashion. The entire work is done through analyzing the literatures of the lean researchers and practitioners work. This paper will also help the relevant domain people to choose and to understand the reason for selecting the specific lean tools, while implementing Lean methodology.