Lean Production describes a method with the goal to react quickly to outside influences on production systems. This is a concept that affects the efficiency increase of all company activities within a value chain. This includes, for example, the economical and time-efficient use of the production factors operating resources, personnel, materials, planning and organization.

The core principle of Lean Production is to avoid any waste. To achieve this, the individual production processes are extracted, analyzed and any improvements are fed back into the production system. An approach strongly reminiscent of the Data Mart. Already during the analysis, the lean experts make sure that, for example, the above-mentioned operating resources, personnel or materials can be considered sustainably, flexibly and specifically.

Lean Production always relies on running production processes in order to combine the best solutions of different production systems. In this way, the economies of scale of mass production and the good responsiveness of medium-sized companies are to be achieved simultaneously.

Lean Production and the TIMWOOD principle

To tackle lean production, experts usually use the TIMWOOD principle in order to have actually analyzed all processes at least once:

T= Transport
I = Inventory
M = Motion
W = Waiting
O = Over-Production
O = Over-Engineering
D = Defects

In contrast, Lean Management pursues different methods and procedures to “plan” the processes of the value chain for industrial goods in an optimal way.

You can find more information under the article production logistics.

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