Lean manufacturing and the lean manufacturing process is a concept that was first used by the car manufacturing company Toyota. In fact, the process has been a part of Toyota’s organization for the last 50 years. The lean manufacturing concept essentially involves streamlining the entire process of the production of a company’s product or service. This includes every part of the business, from the order as it first comes in, all the way through the life of the product. As the business becomes more efficient, it can offer its customers competitive pricing and with that, the company is increased growth potential.

Today’s companies that have instituted lean manufacturing processes have found it advantageous to the company as a whole. For example, Toyota still works to improve the quality of their product while reducing costs. Toyota is the only car company in the worth today that is actually building car plants while many of the others in the car industry are closing down operations. Toyota has attempted to teach others to understand and implement the lean system into their manufacturing and continues to grow more after 50 years.

Another success story of the lean manufacturing process is the computer manufacturer Dell. When a customer orders a Dell computer, they actually configure the computer online or with a customer service representative. For Dell, their cash-to-cash cycle (the period of time between when the customer pays and when the company needs to pay for materials) is a negative number of days. Dell actually gets payment from the customer for products they sell 17 days before they have to pay for their materials.

There are other companies that have used the lean manufacturing process to their benefit in other ways. One company was able to reduce the amount of down time on one of their machines from 17% to 6% in just a few months simply by engaging people more and involving them in the processes of continuous improvement. People want to be involved and support is crucial when implementing a successful lean manufacturing program.

Another example of how a company benefited from the lean process is one that created over a million dollars worth of capacity by holding a workshop to look at the changeovers in the company. After working for several days with teams of company employees, going over the changeovers, that million dollars worth of capacity was created every year from the workshop onwards.

Lean manufacturing has many benefits for both the business and its customers. The process can be incorporated into any business that offers customers a service or a product. Provided management is on board with their total support, the lean manufacturing process can make a big impact on a company and its customers in a short period of time.