The term “lean manufacturing” implies that many businesses are running “fat,” that is, operating with too many employees, too many distracting non-core operations, and too much time and money invested in too many irrelevant or downright useless activities. While printing companies that operate on shoestring budgets and find themselves running 24/7 just to keep up would probably object to being called wasteful, the very fact that they work so hard for never enough return may be one indication that there is too much waste in their operation. The challenge lies in defining “waste” and in learning to recognize it.

Ford Motor Company often is cited as originating the lean manufacturing concept with its creation of the moving assembly line in the early part of the 20th century. Ford had already been using interchangeable parts and “the American system” of assigning its production employees to specialized tasks, but it was the moving assembly line that compelled Ford employees to find ways to work as efficiently as possible in order to keep up with the assembly line conveyor as it passed through their work station.

Lean manufacturing as a distinct way of thinking and a method of production was fully developed in Japan by the Toyota organization. During the 1930s, Toyota was just beginning to produce cars, and inferior parts were posing a significant challenge to the firm. Recognizing this problem led the company to the concept of “Kaizen,” or putting teams of workers together to study and analyze every aspect of the production process, in order to make continuous improvements in quality. After World War II, again at Toyota, the notion of producing cars to fulfill orders rather than producing to sell inventory became another tool, known as “pull,” in the lean manufacturing arsenal.

Toyota employee Taiicho Ohno is credited with bringing all of these elements together into an integrated production philosophy aptly titled the Toyota Production System or TPS. The central theme behind TPS and Lean Manufacturing is eliminating waste—but “waste” encompasses much more than what most people might think of as waste.

The seven deadly wastes
Under TPS, waste is not necessarily what is thrown out, but what is not thrown out. It’s all the time, space, activity, and even excess inventory that doesn’t support the bottom line. According to TPS, waste can be categorized as one of seven types:

1) Over-Production, which may fill warehouses but does not respond to actual customer demand. In response to over-production, lean manufacturers produce only what is needed, when it’s needed. Lean businesses may also find out what the customer wants and produce only that. For printers, all jobs are done per-order, so over-production would take the form of over-runs.

2) Transportation, or having to move products or materials around inefficiently during the production process. This relates to the floorplan of the production site and the physical workflow as a job moves through the plant.

3) Waiting. When a production employee is waiting for parts or waiting for another task to be finished upstream, or waiting for a repair or an approval, that employee’s time and labor is wasted.

4) Inventory refers to all unused parts as well as to all unsold finished products. They must be stored and kept somewhere, and until they’re used or sold, they’re a liability rather than an asset. Think of “just-in-time” deliveries, to printers and from printers, as a common solution to inventory.

5) Motion. One Toyota savant noted that “only the last turn tightens the screw.” Having to hunt for the screwdriver and/or the screws wastes time and effort. Wasted motion might be thought of as the difference between being busy and actually working productively.

6) Over-Processing. If workers have to do something two or three times before they get it right—perhaps due to poor or inappropriate tools, poor training, or redundant processes—they’re over-processing. The solution is to streamline the process and make it “idiot-proof.”

7) Defects waste time and money both in inspecting for them and in correcting them.

While these seven wastes were developed in an automobile manufacturing plant, they can be applied across the board to just about every production process, including the executive office. In fact, at Dollco Printing, based in Ottawa with services across Canada and in the northeastern U.S., white collar operations have been a key focus for the company’s lean manufacturing efforts.

Neil Byrne, Dollco’s lean manufacturing facilitator, joined the company less than four years ago to help implement lean manufacturing at the firm. Dollco offers high volume web and offset printing, digital printing, and a full range of supporting services, including bindery and finishing and mailing and distribution, all in one facility.

“When I first came, I was asked to spend about three months as an observer,” he said. “After watching and talking to Dollco employees, we found two areas of concern: office workflow and shop floor workflow. Of the two concerns, we’ve focused on office workflow.”

Because Byrne takes a lean manufacturing approach, he’s not in a position to order changes himself. Change must come from the employees affected by it. Key people were selected from each area of Dollco’s business operations and together, they mapped out an improved system for office and informational workflow.

“It was highly difficult to get real-time job information to the shop floor, as various MIS systems across the company were not as integrated as they should have been to effectively respond to fast changes in client resources,” Byrne said. “We had to develop documentation on how office workflow is organized, but once that was done, we blue-skied it. We decided that this was one area of the business where we were going to wipe the slate clean and introduce a brand new fully integrated MIS system that could be adapted by each department. But it was important that we keep the focus always on the customer. You ask, how can we do our jobs more efficiently to produce better products and services for the customer? And then, what processes do we need to do that? What tools do we need?”

This is the essence of Kaizen—employees identifying the challenges and working through them toward improvement. A Kaizen can be a single conversation or a months-long project, and all processes are subject to periodic review for continuous improvement.

“It was challenging because we had about 16 members on our team,” he said. “They were from the Receiving department, Shipping, Bindery, Press, Prepress, Customer Service, Accounting and Planning. We had a mix of manufacturing and office staff that would meet to communicate, discuss, and understand each others needs.”

Getting everyone involved in a Kaizen is a significant feature of lean manufacturing. The objective is not to simply add new equipment or provide more operator training, but to focus all employees on the company’s common goals and what each worker has to contribute to achieving those goals.

“If you do not have leadership commitment, everything tends to fall by the wayside, “ Byrne said, adding that Kevin Nicholds, Dollco’s president, is committed to the program, as is Randall Pope, vice president and general manager.

“And it’s important to have the operators involved, because if they’re coming up with the solutions, they’re more likely to take ownership of the process,” Byrne noted. Without the hands-on participation of employees at every level, finding solutions and implementing them tends to become “someone else’s problem” and would never get done.

More lean tools
Dollco’s office MIS system was a top priority to support the lean manufacturing initiative, and the new system is integrated, covering every aspect of workflow from job estimating to shipping the final product. And the company has made other changes, too.

“We’ve relocated whole departments,” Byrne said. “We moved Shipping from where it was to the end of the production line, and have also moved Receiving closer to the upstream work area, to the roll warehouse. We reduced the distance that paper has to travel by 55%, and also relocated some offices. That helped to reduce job setup time by at least an hour per job.”

Determining that the physical floorplan of the shop was wasting production time and effort, and deciding what to do about it was the result of another Kaizen. However, the task of making the necessary changes was, in lean terms, a “Kaikaku.” A Kaikaku is a radical change that must be done quickly. It requires intense planning, and it must be executed as quickly as possible to avoid disrupting production all together. Lean manufacturing advocates say that a Kaikaku won’t work unless it’s undertaken within a Kaizen culture. Everyone should understand why the change is necessary and support it.

And how do you get to the root of a problem in the first place? Lean principles suggest using “The Five Whys,” particularly in relation to quality defects. The Five Whys take a problem back to its source. For example: Why does this paper crack on the fold in the Bindery? Because it’s dried out. Why is this paper dried out? The process compels looking for the cause of the problem. Did the drying occur on-press? Under heat lamps? Has the paper been stored too long? Is the work area too hot or too dry? Is it a fault in the paper? Is it the wrong grade of paper for the job? What can be done to solve the problem?

Value Stream Mapping, another important tool, means drawing a picture of the production process. This can take the form of a visualization of the complete workflow, from the time a job comes in until it goes out the door. The Value Stream Map is basically a kind of flow chart, including all production points, and showing how the job (or communications and information) moves to and from each.

Another tool is “5S.” This can be applied to a number of processes, but Byrne spoke of using 5S to arrange a workstation.

Sort through what is needed and what is not;

Straighten things out for convenient placement;

Shine it up by cleaning and tidying;

Standardize by keeping things always in the same place on every shift;

Sustain it through the commitment of employees.

Standards Work is another important principle in lean manufacturing. Printing is a craft, and is sometimes even thought of as an art form. Standardizing the many processes that go into quality printing is a challenge—some employees may feel they’re being required to sacrifice their individuality or creativity—but standardization makes the process repeatable and is necessary for producing reliable quality. For example, a prepress employee may perceive blue a little differently than a press operator, and both may see it differently than the customer does. There is no right or wrong here, and the way to solve any discrepancy is to determine exactly which shade a blue the customer wants, and then devise a standard for it, a measurable percentage of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Lean as a scalable process
Many of the companies, including printing companies, that are implementing lean manufacturing strategies are among the largest corporations in their fields. However, lean manufacturing may be easier for smaller firms to adopt because the Kaizen would have fewer members working in a less complicated organization.

“You don’t have to hire a consultant,” Byrne said. “You can go look at other companies that are doing lean manufacturing. I’ve yet to be turned down when I’ve asked to see other lean facilities. Usually they want to show you how lean tools have been applied.”

He also offers a simple way to get started: “Look at your company and your products from the perspective of the customer. Look for the workflow bottlenecks. Train employees in the Kaizen process. It may be slow at first to overcome resistance. People tend to go back to their old habits, even after they’ve done Kaizen. You can do briefings at the end of each shift, asking what went well, and what can we do better?”

It’s also important to maintain a positive attitude and avoid assigning blame for what goes wrong. Blaming will turn employees away from the process and lose their support. Rather than finding fault, concentrate on what can be done to improve performance. Consider that every department is the client of another department, for example, Prepress ships its work to the Press Room, which ships its work to the Bindery. Can Prepress do something to solve a challenge in the Press Room? Is there something the Press Room can do to make the Bindery more productive? Every employee must be involved; when they take the initiative in problem-solving they own and control the process.

This kind of thinking can work in a company of any size. A single employee can approach his own position this way. Any number of books have been written about lean principles, and they may at least provide a few ideas to experiment with.

In the highly competitive printing marketplace, lean manufacturing principles make it possible to provide exactly what customers want at prices they’re willing to pay by dramatically streamlining management and production processes, optimizing productivity, and eliminating even hidden waste.