Lean Manufacturing System
Lean Manufacturing within FMCG (fast moving consumer goods)
has become largely synonymous with Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
Lean Manufacturing or Lean Six Sigma manufacturing, as it is often called, when done well, fully integrates the benefits of two technologies; Lean, which was hugely developed and expanded upon by Taiichi Ohno and his team at Toyota, whilst Six Sigma received similar efforts, mainly from Motorola.
Lean is largely about minimising waste and improving efficiency. Six Sigma, on the other hand, is about reducing variation in the process on the premise that wherever excessive variation exists in a process, excessive loss is inevitable, a loss for which either the manufacturer or the purchaser pays.
Combining these two complementary technologies into Lean Six Sigma, whilst not invented by Harford Control, underpins the bedrock of everything we do, and gives you the best opportunity to work consistently towards performance optimisation throughout your production process.
Irrespective of the type of business, whether dairy, spirit bottling, fresh fish packing, ready meals etc., they are all faced with similar problems. Though every business is totally different, in its type of product, portfolio of variables, production lines and its end users, each manufacturer, amongst all this complexity, is really concerned with only two things; optimisation of raw materials usage and labour utilisation.
Until something better comes along, Lean Manufacturing provides the best opportunity of achieving these unified objectives through the combination of such tools as; statistical process control, process capability, OEE, SMED (rapid product changeovers), fishbone diagrams, 5Ys, and so on.
All these tools and many more form part of the Harford Lean Manufacturing system, together with minimisation of operator intervention and instantly displayed, real-time analysis, prioritisation and distribution of information directly to the desktops, computer tablets or mobile phones of those personnel who have the best opportunity to take both necessary and desired improvement actions towards overall performance optimisation.
To ensure that Harford brings the highest level of support to the application of its integrated toolkit, all our sales professionals are accredited to Lean Six Sigma Black Belt standard.