Your Challenges

Deployment of Lean Systems

Setting up Lean systems is not a transient fashion: it is about leading the company and all its partners towards customer satisfaction while reducing the resources necessary for this objective.  It is a state of mind that is developed through a set of tools which are part of a tried and tested methodology.

 

Our methodologies and our professional experience are at your service :

We are here to help you make change happen,

• from the operator to the executive committee
• from the product conception to the after sales service
• from the initial implementation of the 5S up to the global pulled streams of your supply chain,

in order to spread the Lean in the heart of your company.

 

Our assistance builds itself from your need :

Starting phase :

Maturity and deployment phase :

Recognition and perpetuation phase :

 

• Lean deployment strategic overview

Lean methods first appeared in the automotive sector and have been deployed mainly in industries where labour costs are significant.  Indeed, “Lean” is often synonymous with “Lean manufacturing” highlighting its roots in the “manual” labour intensive world.

Lean Training is playing its part in broadening the application of Lean techniques. 
In today’s global economy, in France and in Europe, manufacturing has been shrinking, making way for other sectors, which we need to strengthen and make more efficient, as we develop our future economies.
This is a strategic development area that Lean Training has been exploring with success.

Therefore :

Lean Training enriches, develops and implements products adapted to your specific needs. We offer you a global vision to tackle precisely your needs. We implement a long lasting strategy by breathing top-down dynamics and by acting by ground actions (bottom up). The implementation of a structure with a Lean manager 100% dedicated, an executive committee which supports the activities by marked out and defined actions during steering committees are so many necessary steps to bring to a successful end to your strategy of Lean deployment.

 

Besides :

Our strategy is a security of success and development for our customers and for our company. It also allows us to contribute to the just development of our company by a clear positioning and an asserted social utility.

 

•Fast improvement of the performance

In hardly 4 months, this company managed to double the production quantity (from 900 to 1850 units / hour) without tangible investment. These results were obtained thanks to the dynamism of the group (more than 80 % of the defined action plans were realized/acted) and thanks also to the executive committee support.This company demonstrated once again that the Lean initiative is efficient and fast both for the automatic line and for the manual line. Lean Training is proud to contribute daily to such results. Some figures: duration of workshop: 14 weeks. Increase of the TRS: + 47 %. Reduction of the duration of change of prizes(lots): 34 %.

 

• Alternative to subcontracting

Lean, as a company global initiative, also allows by targeted actions to improve very quickly operational performances: we escort (?) companies or departments in trouble to restore their performance and avoid subcontracting or an inequitable relocationSo, in few months, we knew how to restore the competitiveness of a manufacturing car batteries company (drum kits), allowing them to avoid subcontracting in Thailand about 10 % of their needs in batteries(drum kits) of second horsemanship. 

 

• Product/Process Design:

This French manufacturer of consumer electronic products is facing a very active Asian competition, which affects him with low prices. One of the privileged strategic axes is the innovation, to produce, with a steady rhythm, always bringing more use value to the consumers. For that purpose, the ability to react of the activity R&D is crucial. But in this case, the organization is too conventional and the processes abound in opportunities of improvement. The "Lean" workshop allowed to shorten the " time to market " by 40 % in very few months. So, while the most pessimistic had thrown in the towel, the best-selling product was able to win the shelf spaces of the mass-market retailing before Christmas of the same year, and to boost conveniently the sales of the company.

 

•To Manage Growth with constant resources

One of the European leaders of the household electrical appliances had projects of ambitious development in his French factory. But it required supplementary/additional surfaces/locations, while the factory was located in the narrow, and down town center. Buying or renting a new building, somewhere else, was not profitable. There was a solution: a "Lean" workshop, like a “Just in time” and with the "kaikaku" (break) spirit. Three months later, one thousand square meters were released, thanks to the merger of two work station, the withdrawal of the outstanding in-progress and to the on-line integration of the subsets. Later, several other workshops of this type allowed to develop and to strengthen the first experiences, and to insure the growth without real estate investments and moving costs.

 

• Top Management et pilotes training

Lean system arises directly from the Toyota Production System. If numerous companies are engaged in this initiative, nobody is able to reach today the level of maturity of the car manufacturer. Indeed, Lean questions the culture of companies and the values which she is made off. Brilliant individuals obtaining fast results are not enough anymore: the processes must be seen again, improved continuously, the managers have to dedicate themselves to their team, to the training of their staff and to the global result of the company. Lean is a permanent attitude and not a fashionable project. It asks for the commitment on behalf of all the managers, beginning of course with the support of the head office. To set up the foundations of Lean, it is to make aware all your managers of this absolute necessity: a permanent commitment to improve constantly the processes of a company, by taking away waste and optimizing resources. An outside support allows you to question the paradigms of your company and to bring these essential messages at the beginning of project to the whole management team.

 

 •Accompaniment of the mastering of workshop

How to make sure that the control fulfills correctly its mission, that his team acknowledge its competence and its leadership about the everyday life? This operational leadership contains various aspects: first, it is about a technical recognition, based on a sufficient knowledge of processes and products or delivered services. It is also about management: learn to organize the staff and the activity, to supply orders/to brief,  to follow the progress, to measure the level of performances, to guarantee the quality of products and the respect of the standards. It is necessary to maintain the god shape of the means of production, by an effective autonomous maintenance , and to improve used processes by regular actions. In brief, the control becomes the company manager of its sector. It has to contribute to the "top- down " and the "bottom-up", by insuring the "middle-down" and the "middle-up"! 

These activities are based on the application of: "Gemba, Genbutsu, Genjitsu ", that is the systematic consideration of the following 2 elements: the real place, the real object and the real fact. We build with you this training-action, which allows you to acquire these essential skills to guarantee the operational deployment of Lean in your company.

 

• Lean Green Belt® - Lean Black Belt®

Spreading out the Lean in your company leans on an initiative which aims on implying gradually your whole staff. In the initial phase, the managers and the improvement workshop drivers guarantee the good progress of the first stages. They must acquire the necessary technical skills and the company must recognize this personal commitment. Certifications Lean Green Belt ® and of Lean Black Belt ® are inspired of 6 sigma. However, it is not a question here of handling if necessary sophisticated statistical tools but of knowing how to apply to the fieldwork some Lean tools, such as the SMED, Just in time, the 5S, etc. and to know how to replace them within the framework of a global initiative. These training courses are validated systematically by one or several projects managed individually and validated by an external senior consultant. These internal mentors guarantee you a fast deployment of  continuous improvement on the fieldwork by an expertise validated by Lean Training and a motivation developed within the company.

 

•Ergonomics and working conditions

To reconcile ergonomics and performances is possible not only but even necessary:
we have considered for a long time that the productivity could be made only to the detriment of the working conditions, and that the ergonomics could only degrade the performances of the company. If this thinking is full of good senses notably for the industries of the luxury appealing to very qualified craftsmen, we know in the other sectors and in the majority of the cases to improve collectively the performances of the company and the working conditions of her employees; and we achieve this during participative approach that we set up with our ergonomist partners.

 

• Lean Audits and Benchmarking

Every visit of company is an opportunity to progress. There are for example methodologies allowing to estimate within one-hour visit the production cost by simply observating  the accessible data. More generally, to confront each other with other companies is not useful only if you know how to draw lessons from it. It is sometimes a question of revealing, behind the obvious easiness of observed operations, the functioning processes, the standards set up and the underlying concepts : Excellence builds itself of details, difficult to observe without a good preparation and an exercised eye. We help numerous companies to identify these opportunities of progress. We introduce an approach which feeds on work experience, on preparation schedule and on benchmark evaluation, of a rigorous sharing of roles, of sites recognized in their domain and providing you with the required interlocutors. To make of these exchanges a permanent source of progress.

 

• TPM® awards

The purpose of the TPM is to obtain and to improve the industrial organization of equipments through the autonomous maintenance, through the professional maintenance, through the targeted improvement of the losses, etc. The good success of a TPM approach goes by the staff involvement. They see their work gaining thanks to the rise of the level of their skills.

The TPM Awards is awarded to a company which reaches an excellent industrial level thanks to the involvement of her whole staff. It concerns of course the production but also all the departments of the company. In France, the steel industry and the automobile sector were the pioneers of the TPM initiative, this approach which applies to very diverse sectors today.How to set up this initiative? Our TPM expert  have shown the way to companies for 20 years, allowing them to reach this level, recognized by the Japanese founder organization of the TPM, Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.

We help your company to prepare the TPM Awards through diagnosis, the laying-out of a master plan, the training and the coaching of your staff and of some individual, the drafting of activity reports, the presentation of the improvement activities on the fieldwork, and finally we attend audits of certification of the JIPM.

 

• Lean Supply Chain: Flow Acceleration and Stocks Reduction

In this company a conventional organization in not dedicated production lines was leading for a family of products has production time of 2 days for series from 20 to 40 identical products. The classic management MRP of the production forced to propose to the customers delays of 3 weeks on standard products of the range and of a month or more on specific products.
The lean intervention consisted at first to reorganize production lines in cells of production JUST IN TIME dedicated, what allowed an earnings of surface of 30 % and a reduction from manufacturing unit time down to two hours.
A second intervention of implementation of a management in pulled flow for the finished products allowed to reduce from 3 weeks to 2 days the stock of finished products, from 3 weeks to 2 days delays of the standard products and from 1 month to 5 days the waiting delay for special products. All of this, improving on these products the rate of customer services from 60 % to 90 %.