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Lean Methods

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Definition

A set of tools developed to reduce the waste associated with the flow of materials and information in a process from beginning to end. The goal of Lean is to identify and eliminate non-essential and non-value added steps in the business process in order to streamline production, improve quality and gain customer loyalty.

Lean Methods can be employed within the DMAIC framework to augment Six Sigma tools when the project focus is to improve process speed and efficiency.

Examples

Examples of Lean tools:

Value Stream Analysis
Takt Time
Little's Law/Theory of Constraints
Quick Changeovers / SMED
Kanban / Pull Scheduling
Poka-Yoke / Error Proofing
Kaizen
Standardized Work
Total Productive Maintenance
Andon Boards
5-S

External Links

Lean thinking from the EPA: - http://www.epa.gov/lean/thinking/index.htm Lean Math Blog: - http://leanmath.com/blog/about/