The term lean manufacturing is used by many companies these days. Manufacturers often view lean as the holy grail, with the belief that, when properly implemented and understood, it will bring huge bottom-line improvements.
While there is no fault in this thinking, the real bottleneck to implementation is in a manufacturer’s ability to embrace all its concepts.
Too often, lean methodology is only marginally understood, haphazardly implemented, and not thoroughly embraced in a cultural shift from top management down. While there is a myriad of information to cover with lean, a good starting focus is to identify and illustrate how lean techniques and methods support ISO 9001.
ISO 9001 is the mother ship of all standards and quality thinking in the world. All other ISO standards, as well as many non-ISO standards, can trace their beginnings to ISO 9001. Lean methodology, when implemented effectively, can be the pointed end of your company’s ISO spear. In fact, one could argue that if you follow lean principles, you’ve put several fundamental concepts of ISO 9001 in place.
The greatest alignment between lean and ISO 9001 occurs between clauses 8 and 10.
Seven Deadly Forms of Waste
Lean thinking embodies waste elimination, so I like to make this concept the primary focus. Lean uses the acronym COMMWIP to identify the different types of waste in most manufacturing companies.
Most companies are failing at one or more of these at any given time. Identifying the type of waste and understanding the individual risks of each, as well as placing proper engineering controls in place, supports ISO 9001 on many levels.
ISO not only requires that process risks be understood and controlled but goes one step further by requiring quality objectives be understood, stated, and monitored for effectiveness and continuous improvement. ISO adds additional firepower to lean in this scenario, as it’s necessary to baseline operations first to properly assess if improvements are taking hold and are sustainable.
All forms of waste when controlled support the requirements of clause 8 of ISO 9001, which deals with all aspects of operational control. This is the prime area of focus for most companies.
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