A survey of printers by the Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF) and Point Balance, LLC suggests that many companies withing the industry are going lean:
Have you embraced Lean manufacturing in your operations? What tools are you using?More than three-fourths (77%) of North American printing company managers have heard or read about Lean manufacturing. About two-thirds of those managers are familiar with the concepts and techniques of Lean manufacturing, and about 40 percent of printing companies are using Lean manufacturing tools to improve business performance.
Discussion
By Roy Waterhouse on May 22, 2008
We have implemented many lean concepts beginning with the 5S program. We are currently working with a Steering Committee that is assigning Action Teams various projects to work on using the basic Lean concepts of histograms, pareto charts, run charts and control charts.
By Tom Carpenter on May 28, 2008
What size of printing company will consider implementing any form of Lean software?
By David Dodd on May 28, 2008
Tom,
I've been following this post and the comments since I worked with PIA/GATF on the lean manufacturing survey. Lean is not a software application. It is a set of management and production principles, practices and tools that were originally developed by Toyota Motor Corporation in the years immediately following World War II. Lean focuses on the elimination of waste. Lean defines waste as any activity that consumes resources but adds no value. One lean manufacturing practice is to identify and distinguish between value-adding vs. non-value-adding activities, and find ways to eliminate as many non-value-adding activities as possible.
If you're interested, I will have a series of columns at WhatTheyThink about lean manufacturing that will begin in the near future.
By James on May 29, 2008
David,
I was reading your post and I must say that your reference to Lean not being a software application is correct. However, this isn't the indication I gathered from Tom's comment. Software can be a useful tool when implementing lean methodologies. There are many instances where printing organizations lack visibility to do a proper gap analysis.
Moreover, the inconsistencies of value added and non-value added are yet to be determined. The theory of “It’s not the people, it’s the process” is debatable. The challenge is determining the value added vs. non-value added when personnel is hands-on with either set.
Discussion
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