Continuous improvement should be a big part of every manufacturing company’s culture, so it’s important to find ways to encourage employees to get involved. At HUI, we bring together a lead from each team, who focuses on finding opportunities to make company-wide improvements. However assembling the team is just a start, so we’re going to cover some ideas on how to encourage continuous improvement on the shop floor.
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In a recent blog post we discussed "Activities to Get You Started with Continuous Improvement" to give you more information on some popular activities you can use to weed out the unnecessary wastes in your manufacturing processes. However, in that post we didn't go into detail about the types of wastes you might find. The best way to illustrate those wastes is to remember the acrostic: "Downtime", which derives from the seven forms of muda/waste outlined by Toyota Production System. The eighth waste was added in the 1990s as the system became more widely accepted around the world (source: The Lean Way Blog). Keeping these eight wastes in mind will keep you in the continuous improvement mindset, so we've created this "8 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing" Infographic to help you remember what each letter stands for.
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