Driving Continuous Improvement in Your Workplace

Lean Manufacturing is a strategy to reduce costs, improve product quality, and avoid workplace injuries through continuous improvement. Introduced and refined by Toyota over the past 50 years, the concepts of Lean Manufacturing are becoming widely used by Fortune 500 companies to stay competitive in the global marketplace.

Successful companies are finding that Ergonomics is a critical factor in the success of their Lean Manufacturing initiative. When companies do not take Ergonomics into consideration when making job changes, they experience increased injuries after they “lean out” a work area. Companies that do consider Ergonomics as part of their lean agenda find that ergonomic improvements result in big savings and few injuries.

Understanding Lean Manufacturing

A primary goal of lean manufacturing is to reduce costs through the elimination of the waste. Waste can be defined as activities in your company that add time, cost and effort, but no value to you or your customer.

While many methods are used to implement Lean Manufacturing, one of the most popular is the “Kaizen Event”. Kaizen events are focused workshops to identify and implement low cost, high impact improvements. Typically lasting two to four days, the workshops combine training, analysis, and real-time changes using a task force of shop floor worker to deliver immediate business value.

Case studies have demonstrated that throughput can be increased by 25% to 60%, ergonomic risk exposure can be reduced 80% and a financial payback of three to six months is often achieved.

Understanding Ergonomics

Ergonomics is a critical waste to be eliminated in a Lean initiative. Ergonomics is a basic understanding that people have limits to what they can and cannot do. When human limits are not considered – such as excessive reaching, bending, twisting and walking – the price is often longer cycle times, inefficient processes, and expensive injuries.

Therefore, the layout of the workplace, the required forces, parts assembly, production frequencies, and the tools and equipment used in the process are an important consideration for human capabilities and ergonomic specifications to eliminate wasteful motions.

Summary

Lean manufacturing initiatives drive accelerated workplace changes and Ergonomics is an enabling approach to ensure Lean success. When ergonomics is taken into consideration for these changes, work areas are designed to improve human performance and injury rates go down. When ergonomics is not a part of the workplace changes, companies experience increased injuries and miss out on opportunities to dramatically eliminate waste.

For additional articles about evaluating ergonomic risk and measuring productivity improvements, call (615) 289-4479.