Lean thinking is an efficient way of running a business company or any other organization. The main goal of lean thinking and manufacturing is to lower the expenses as much as possible to make the productions more profitable. I have read an article of Adam Robinson “Lean manufacturing: Is it really worth It?” about lean benefits, which are to be discussed below.
Summarizing the article of Mr. Robinson, I can say that the lean manufacturing program will turn into an advantage for any organization. Thus, a lean management also refers to the safety of local employees because they get higher salaries due to the reduced costs of a particular organization (Mann, 2015). However, lean provides excellent health care services to improve an efficiency of the local workers. Nevertheless, Robinson (2015) claims that the lean strategy has to be well planned by the management, otherwise, this campaign will immediately fail.
Main Points in Lean Manufacturing
The author outlines some main points of the lean manufacturing, which are necessary to be followed. The first statement says that a company has to identify an executive that will be responsible for planning and running this process. The second thing that has to be done is the education of all employees, which lets them understand how to act and operate from now on. Moreover, the organization has to set clear goals for improving its system, which have to be real, achievable and reasonable. And the last thing that author highly recommends to do is to set deadlines for achieving different goals because time-management saves the most expensive currency in the world (time).
The Intended Audience
In my opinion, the author was addressing a certain audience to share his experience in lean manufacturing. Statistics show that the article “Lean manufacturing: Is it really worth It?” is preferable mostly by businessmen and people who want to make their organization more profitable, efficient and useful for their clients. About twenty percent of the views were made by the students who are interested in lean manufacturing as it gets more popular and shows great results in practice.
Relation to the Course
The discussed article supports and has a lot in common with information in my textbook, which I received during my course of lean approaches to safety and health in a workplace. For instance, both sources taught me that schedules of all employees and workers have to be balanced, which improves the quality of their jobs and does not affect people’s health. Sometimes they get exhausted after a long day of hard work, but the properly ordered breaks and work hours save their valuable energy. An organization that utilizes lean manufacturing process might be more or less successful in implementing lean safety techniques till the first fatal mistake. As it was said above, everything has to be well planned and organized in the beginning of implementing of this strategy.
How Could the Author Expanded on the Main Points
The author explained the main things about lean manufacturing, although he could have somewhat expanded his thoughts on the main points. For example, it would be interesting to read Robinson’s philosophy of giving bonuses and promotions to employees or of all possible ways of lowering the company’s costs. It would also be interesting for me to have some examples of successful lean campaigns that were realized within the global businesses. Besides, I think that the cultural momentum plays a significant role in accepting the lean thinking because it all comes to the mutual goals, needs, and desires. Every member of a team has to have a passion for what he or she is doing, and there is no success without a positive set of mind.
Conclusion
The new horizons cannot be reached without any losses, which may refer to the quality of a product or services. It is a very professional quality – to see that thin edge between making a low-quality product and reducing expenditures.
References
Mann, D. (2015). Creating a lean culture: Tools to sustain lean conversions; Third edition. Boca Raton, FL: Productivity Press.
Robinson, A. (2015). Lean manufacturing: Is it really worth It? Web.