Lean Thinking

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• CIRCA Group's Approach
• CIRCA Group's Lean Manufacturing/Lean Operations Expertise
• Securing 'Lean' cost reductions (savings) in manufacturing, subsupply and distribution systems - Examples
• Securing 'Lean' cost reductions (savings) saving in Service Organisations
• Lean Training

CIRCA Group's Approach

The lean approach is based on the work carried out in Toyota by Taiichi Ohno in the Toyota Automotive Factories, where CIRCA's principle expert, Pat Lawlor learned about Lean Thinking. Based on this work in production a new philosophy called 'Lean Thinking' was developed that has applications across the wider area of business including services.

• Lean is about being effective and efficient;
• It is about doing what is right and doing it as well as can be done;
• Lean focuses on the customer value stream and eliminates as much non-value added activities as possible;

This approach leads to greater customer satisfaction, lower unit cost and most of all the quality of the service improves significantly.

One of the key principles of lean is the respect for people and society. Lean is not mean .It is not about headcount reductions. It is about been able to do more to improve patient care with existing resources.

Firstly from a Lean perspective about 95% of everything an organisation does is not value adding. This creates enormous opportunities for cost reduction.

Secondly, Lean brings a set of principles and tools that help organisations disentangle the various forms of waste. Using Value Stream and Process Mapping, Physical Flow methods, Check Sheets and Mistake Proofing tools within a team framework the Lean approach guarantees a much more effective and efficient operation that will improve customer satisfaction and quality of service at a reduced cost.

They are not easy to achieve and it takes time to create real understanding, change behaviour permanently and establish a Lean focus throughout an organisation.

The following chart is one we use for guiding our work in this area. It is a simple diagram of the involvement of different levels of staff in a lean thinking project.

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CIRCA Group's Lean Manufacturing/Lean Operations Expertise

The CIRCA Group team have considerable experience in general management, manufacturing and R&D experience in Irish and International companies. They have also assisted companies in their business development particularly in the area of innovation and manufacturing.

Members of the team have introduced, trained and implemented Lean methods to a number of companies in Ireland, Germany and the USA in the areas of manufacturing, back-office and R&D and have achieved significant cost savings.

They have worked with companies to upgrade their supply base and have implemented Lean methods with them. The penetration of Lean to the supply base ensures that even greater savings can be made.

The team leader is Patrick Lawlor who has held a number of senior management positions including General Manager and Executive Director of Donnelly Mirrors Ltd. (1987-2006). During this period he undertook a number of projects in the Lean area including the following:

¨     Introduction of Lean to Donnelly Mirrors. This involved a major activity over a five year period and transformed the work practices within the company. A major aspect of this transformation was the change process that had to be carried out within a union environment. This was a major project as the business was growing and there were 400 people affected by the change. Patrick was also responsible for the staff training associated with the project.

¨     Patrick was also involved in the design and implementation of Lean projects in Germany and the USA.

The CIRCA Lean Team have a proven track record and expert knowledge in the area of Lean and have carried out Lean assignments from individual Kaizen projects to large scale multi faceted Lean projects in Irish and multinational companies.

The CIRCA Lean Team have developed a set of effective methodologies that will ensure that Lean principles can be instilled in companies. The skills and expertise of the CIRCA Lean Team have been gained in Ireland, USA and Japan and are based on best practices in these countries.

Some of the CIRCA Lean Teams skills and expertise include the following, Value stream mapping, Process Mapping, Physical Flow, Performance Run Charts, Kaizen, Standard Work, 5S, JIT, Kanban, Takt Time, Autonmation (Jidoka), Waste elimination (Muda), In Station Process Control, Level production, Equipment Reliability, S.M.E.D, Single Piece,Flow, Value Engineering and Team building with a training capability in all these areas and the setting of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).

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Manufacturing Securing 'Lean' cost reductions (savings) in manufacturing, subsupply and distribution systems - Examples

Case 1:

Project: The objective of the assignment was to study the current operations and systems and to identify opportunities for improvement in efficiency and possible cost reductions available from lean business initiatives.

Identified savings of €50k in the better use of space and inventory with additional efficiency direct labour savings of 30%. A Value analysis was also carried out on the product to reduce assembly time.

Case 2:

Project: The objective of the project was to re-layout the factory to improve the work flow and efficiency of the operation. An extensive lean programme was undertaken to plan the factory layout to suit customer demand. Some of the Lean tools used included, Process Mapping and Physical Flow used in conjunction with Production layout software to generate an innovative and more efficient production flow.

Results: Savings of about 30% were achieved with the improved flow and the setting up of an inventory pull capability that utilised a Kanban system.

Case 3:

Project: The objective of the assignment was to investigate and identify opportunities for cost reductions that would improve the competitiveness of the company. The focus for the cost reductions was in the operations. However it became clear that some changes to the product would simplify the product assembly process and thus reduce the number of assembly operations.

The combination of these product changes and the application of Lean techniques to the production process achieved the required savings of 30%.

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Securing 'Lean' cost reductions (savings) saving in Service Organisations

Lean Thinking processes have been used successfully in medical service organizations in the UK, Australia and the USA.

The NHS Confederation commissioned the Lean Enterprise Academy run by Daniel Jones in the UK to look at the requirements for the introduction of Lean Thinking into the NHS.

In Australia there is much work being carried out under the auspices of redesigning health care systems.

While in the USA there a number of Lean initiatives across a number of states in a variety of hospitals.

All of these initiatives use the basic principles of Lean Thinking which can be successfully applied in any service organization.

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Lean Training

The CIRCA Lean Team have considerable experience in delivering in the area of training. The CIRCA Team have conducted a number of training courses at management and operator level that include theory and practice. The following examples illustrate this experience.

1. Trained a shop floor team on how to conduct a Kaizen. Theory and Practice
2. Gave a one day training session to senior management on the principles of Lean
3. Set up and provided training courses on Value Analysis
4. Gave a course on Standard Work to shop floor operators. Theory and Practice
5. Gave a course to Managers on how to implement change in the workforce

CIRCA Group have found that the best training methods for Lean is to combine Learning By Doing with the Theory. Thus trainers must be fully familiar with the theory and the practice of Lean.

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