This manual draws upon many years of direct experience in the management of improvement projects and training as Lean Managers in companies operating across various sectors (eg. Automotive, Electronics, Mechanical, Chemistry, Logistics). It presents the main tools of Lean Enterprise in order to make them applicable immediately in the management of quality and continuous improvement process both in production and in office environments, integrating within it concrete experiences and "tricks of the trade" that are not usually addressed in other reference texts.
Lean Enterprise evolved from the integration of Toyota Production System and Six Sigma, born in Motorola and developed in General Motors. It is an approach involving all resources that provide for small and continuous improvements aimed at reducing waste, ensuring sustainability and pervasiveness in the company, combined with a scientific approach that uses refined statistical tools aimed at achieving substantial improvements that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.
In addition to being packed with practical and concrete examples based on experiences in the field, the manual shows step-by-step development of numerous analyses using Excel and Minitab and aims to be a tool of practical consultation in the company supporting Green Belts in their daily work, as well as being the basis for the achievement of LSSGB certification (Lean Six Sigma Green Belt).
The manual considers the main tools of Lean Thinking and the Toyota Production System such as the 5S, PDCA, A3 for problem-solving, the Kanban system, the Value Stream Map (VSM) for process mapping, SMED for the reduction of machine tooling time, visible planning for the management of improvement projects, the Pareto diagram.
Some of the tools covered in Six Sigma and industrial statistics are, for example, control charts, process capability, Measurement System Analysis (MSA), normal distribution, data analysis and a graphical representation, and DMAIC as a method for project management.
