Lean Manufacturing is a form of continuous improvement. More precisely, it’s an empowering business methodology for analyzing the flow of information and materials in a manufacturing environment and continuously improving the process to achieve enhanced value for the enterprise.

Even though the two should go hand-in-hand, Lean doesn’t necessarily translate into safer manufacturing. In fact, Lean can come at the expense of safety. In a worst case scenario, an overzealous company may implement Lean Manufacturing strategies where safety is overlooked or compromised.

This series looks at Lean Manufacturing and suggests an approach to incorporate safety objectives into a Lean Manufacturing initiative.

What Is Lean Manufacturing?

The concept evolved from Toyota's post-WWII efforts to close the productivity gap with American automakers. The company refined earlier Just-in-Time manufacturing systems to increase productivity and quality and focused their efforts on cutting waste at all levels.

In 1990, a group of MIT academics reporting on Toyota's successes coined the term “Lean Manufacturing.” As Lean Manufacturing was embraced by corporations, it became the catch-all phrase for a variety of new strategies aimed at “cutting the fat” out of production processes.

Three Approaches

Three broadly used Lean Manufacturing approaches include:

• Six Sigma: A process change methodology based on defining and measuring the problem, then analyzing, improving and controlling it;
• Kaizen: A series of highly focused events dedicated to cutting the waste out of production operations; and
• 5-S: The five S's stand for Japanese terms loosely translated as Sort, Set-in-order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. Once unnecessary mess and clutter are reduced, tools, parts and inventory are organized for maximum efficiency.

Process Review and Cutting Fat

These strategies can be used separately or in combination. In all cases, the basic scheme is to reduce cost systematically throughout the product and production process by means of a series of process reviews.
Lean manufacturing is not a destination. It is a journey, an ongoing process. Lean uses a systematic approach to identify and eliminate non-value-added activities and waste through continuous improvement. Non value-added may activities include:

• Inventory (making the product before it is needed)
• Overproduction (producing more than what is needed)
• Motion (idle-time waiting)
• Transportation (travel between workstations)  waiting
• Defects
• Underutilized people
• Extra processing.

The goal of lean manufacturing is to eliminate, reduce or simplify wastes by standardization of work processes, organizing the workplace, utilizing cross trained employees and teams and reducing change over time and within raw materials within the work stations where they are consumed.

Is Lean Safe?

Unfortunately, safety can be a casualty of Lean Manufacturing. In its zeal to get lean, management might confuse safety for fat and seek to trim it. Of course, this view is misguided. Ultimately, increasing efficiency at the expense of safety doesn’t increase efficiency at all. On the contrary, it costs a firm far more than it saves — often significantly more.

Thus, making a worker lift materials beyond his strength capabilities in the interest of “efficiency” will backfire because it will take the worker more time and energy to perform the task and heighten the risk of overexertion. Similarly, a poorly designed task that requires a worker to reach excessively is not only inefficient (more time and motion required), but is also likely to cause injury.

Conclusion

Next week, in Part 2 of this series, I will outline a four-step process safety directors can use to eliminate the disconnect between safety and efficiency and harmonize workplace health and safety with Lean Manufacturing initiatives.

SAXCIES PROFILE

Think Safe President Paula Wickham (middle) accepting the Safety Product Saxcie from Glenn Demby (left) and Mark Ziebarth (right) of Bongarde Media, parent company of SafetyXChange

WINNER FOR BEST NEW SAFETY PRODUCT:

First Voice™ Self-contained Emergency Treatment (SET) System
From: Think Safe

Criteria: The Best New Safety Product is awarded to an innovative product or service that enhances health and safety in and out of the workplace, as voted by the members of SafetyXChange.  

The Winner: First Voice™ Self-Contained Emergency Treatment (SET) System

Profile: Best New Safety Product is different from the other Saxcies. For one thing, it’s the only Saxcie decided by member vote. There are also 10 finalists. It was a close vote. But in the end, the winner was a unique new first aid device known as First Voice.

It was a great choice. First Voice started with an observation. Annette Carter was a flight nurse who responded to medical emergencies. When she’d touch down at the scene of an emergency, she’d find more often than not that the victim had received no, inadequate or even harmful treatment. The problem: People on the scene lacked the information and supplies necessary to stabilize the victim until help could arrive. Sadly, therefore, opportunities to save the victim’s life or prevent serious injury were lost. Nurse Carter saw how the AED had saved victims of cardiac arrest. A light bulb went off. “Let’s use the same concept and technology to save victims of other kinds of medical emergency,” she resolved.

The result is First Voice. First Voice provides a series of interactive Yes/No verbal prompts for more than 30 medical emergencies including burns, broken bones, HAZMAT incidents, severe bleeding and CPR. Like an AED, it empowers a person on the scene to provide lifesaving first aid, even if that person has absolutely no training. It even comes with pre-packaged supplies.

First Voice looks like a child’s toy — a blue box with colourful buttons. But it this simplicity that forms the essence of First Voice and gives it the power to make it possible for others to save lives.

So, to the creators of First Voice, SafetyXChange says congratulations and thanks for blessing us with your product.

Story Tools:  Email This Post  Print This Post Top