Lean Management: Processes, Concepts, And Implementation

Managing the Lean Process

According to the researcher, there are number of processes involved in the concept of Lean Management that needs to be planned and executed by an individual to increase the productivity of the organization. Lean Management is a procedure with the help of which various company’s supports continuous improvements; it is basically a long term loom to work that methodically seeks to attain a small or incremental changes in order to get better quality and efficiency of business operations. An individual can manage the Lean process in the following way:

Managing the Lean Process

Management of People: Lean Management put entire focusing on managing the people of the organization effectively and monitoring their behavior in the work place. The main purpose of managing the people is that is by improving the labor standards and enhancing productivity of the organization in the long run (Martinez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes 2014). 

Control of Plant Equipment: In this step, an individual critically evaluating all the machineries and equipments of the organization and selecting the best tools for generating productivity within the organization. These Lean processes help an individual to make selective investment on all the underperforming assets and generates efficacy by implementing suitable changes accordingly.

Prognostic & Preventive Plant Maintenance: It is necessary to improve the maintenance of the organization equipments from time to time and in these processes, it is done by predicting and preventive plant maintenance procedures. It improves the assets utilization by creating efficacy in the uptime and improves the asset availability by performing regular maintenance when and where there is an urge to do (Hajmohammad et al., 2013).

Optimization of Processes: Optimization of process consist of creating a structured procedure for all the business processes that are done while maintaining efficacy within the production process. It helps in reducing the sub optimal process of operations and always tries to improve the quality of the product respectively.

Lean Management creates values for customers with the usage of fewer or limited resources. An organization that implements Lean Management concepts can deliver customer satisfaction, as they understand customer value and focuses on all the input processes to increase the value of the customer. The primary goal is to provide an ideal value to the customer with the help of generating a value creation process that has minimum waste (Bicheno and Holweg 2016).

To define and evaluate the concepts of Lean Management in this assignment the researcher has chosen Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic is a British Aviation company that was established in the year 1948 as the British Atlantic Airways. The organization has two operating bases located in London-Gatwick and London-Heathrow respectively (Virginatlantic.com, 2017)

Value Creation through Lean Management

The main products of Virgin Atlantic are to provide their customer with premium flying experience with their new and modern fleet carriers. Virgin Atlantic also provides a different range of cargo products to their customer for example like Just Ride, Must Ride, Fast Ride, VEX, Cool Chain and Pets. The services of the organization is to provide their customer with a quality of journey while travelling with them and make ensure that they do not have any headache in the process. The primary objective of the organization is to focus on reliability and consistency. Virgin Atlantic also pit much more focus on their individual customer needs thus they have maintained a friendly team where customers can call and discuss their specific requirements before travelling.

The main customers of Virgin Atlantic consist of all the people that travel throughout United Kingdom for leisure and business purposes (Virginatlantic.com, 2017)

Volume: Volume of Virgin Atlantic products consists of their products fleet size and the number of destinations they are covering in a single day. The production of new and modern aircrafts under their belt is adding to the volume of their products and different services (Bhasin 2015).

Variety: Virgin Atlantic has implemented variety of new services to their customer to increase their value and quality of services they provide is different from their customers. They always try to develop their products that are aircrafts to provide complete satisfaction while travelling with them. Moreover, the organization also provides full safety of the cargo products and delivers them without damaging the products (Yang et al., 2015).

Variation: There is lots of variation in the products of Virgin Atlantic as they continuously produce innovative designs in their aircrafts that keep their customers interested and thus keep the demand of their products and services high (Bhasin 2015).

Visibility: There is a good visibility of their products and services and customers are able to see and track their experience accordingly. For example, the customers can track package of their air tickets and cargo delivery details through their websites (Zhou 2016).

According to the researcher, the 5^th V of the products of Virgin Atlantic can be Value. The organization is always focusing on their customer needs and has taken measure to validate their preferences and made products according to their needs. Therefore, customers will be able to identify the value they are getting while purchasing various products and services form Virgin Atlantic (Clark, Silvester and Knowles 2013).

Transformation and Product Planning Process

The two processes that are required to deliver the company’s product and services are the Transformation Process and Product Planning Process.

Transformation Process: The transformation process is a type of action or group of several activities that usually takes one or additional inputs and transforms them to include value in them, and provides outputs for customers and distinctive clients. (Zhou 2016).

The transformation process consists of the changing of physical distinctiveness of raw material, changes in the location of materials and information, storage of materials and changes in the physiological state of customers by delivering them quality products. In the Transformation Processes, there is a systematic way categorizing dissimilar types of Transformation like:

• Manufacturing the material creation of products
• Transporting the movement of resources towards the customer
• Supply changes the possession of goods
• Servicing that includes providing quality amount of time while travelling

Operation Process Mapping Model

Production Planning Process: Production planning process is a type of process that focuses on the future demands of the organization and estimate production beforehand. The organization gathers input from various organizational functions like marketing, finance, operations and engineering and then develops a plan to produce products as per the needs and want of their customer to provide them complete satisfaction (Fullerton, Kennedy and Widener 2014). 

Operation Process Mapping Model

This type of process is typically updated and re evaluated annually. The organization business plan consists of the objectives of profitability, growth rate and return on investment is the starting point of time for a production plan process. This plan contains all the details of the aggregate production rate and the size of the workforce. Therefore, it helps the organization to estimate how much inventory they can hold and the amount of overtime they can consider. An organization develops a production plan process on the basis of their composite or primary product for example, in the case of Virgin Atlantic, as their primary product is the Aircrafts they do production plan on the choice and preferences of their customer and maintain high standards of innovation in their fleets. Therefore, Virgin Atlantic put their entire focus on generating customer value and providing them valuable amount of service quality (Teich and Faddoul 2013).

The concept of Lean was created by Toyota to eliminate and reduce waste and inefficiency in their respective manufacturing operation process. The Lean process became so popular and successful that it has been embraced in most of the manufacturing operations sectors around the world.

For any organization, implementing Lean Management concepts is very important as it critical for competing against lower cost countries (Chiarini, Found and Rich 2015). The primary purpose of Lean Management is to reduce and eradicate waste that is the non-value added mechanism of any process. However, it is been observed that unless an operation process has under gone through Lean management process it always consists of various elements of waste. Therefore, when they are done correctly, the concepts of Lean create huge improvements in the efficacy, productivity, material costs, cycle time and scraps. According to the researcher, the concepts of Lean Management do not only put focus on manufacturing unit only but also it can improve the working of teams together, improve inventory management and can create efficiency with client interaction (Wisner, Tan and Leong 2014).

Five Major Concepts of Lean Management

Five major concepts that are associated with Lean Management they are as follows:

Value: Value is defined by the consumer needs for a specific product or service. For example, what is the time taken for manufacturing and delivery? What is the actual price of production? This information is very crucial for the customer, as they always tend to define value.

Value Stream: Once the value is dogged, the next step is to map the ‘value stream’ or all the steps and procedures that are involved in taking a specific product from raw materials to delivering the final products to the potential customer. Therefore, value stream mapping is a very simple practice that identifies all the necessary measures that take a product and service through any process. That process consists of the product design, procurement, production, HR, administration, delivery and customer service (Stanton et al., 2014).

 All the above ideas are drawn on a page basically representation of a map or flow of material/product through the entire process. The primary goal of this principle is to recognize those steps that do not generate value and then find various ways to get rid of or reduce those wasteful steps. Moreover, value stream mapping is from time to time referred as the procedure of re-engineering and it provides a better understanding of the whole business operations more effectively (McIntosh, Sheppy and Cohen 2014).

 Flow: After the implementation of eliminating and reducing waste from the value stream, the next important footstep is to make sure the outstanding steps flow smoothly without making any interruptions, bottlenecks and delays. The primary aim of this step is to make the value creation step occur in a very tight sequence in order that the product and service will flow smoothly towards the customer. Therefore, it will require to breakdown silly thinking and make more efforts to make cross-functional across all departments that is one of the biggest challenges for all the lean programs to overcome (Poksinska, Swartling and Drotz 2013). However, if the lean program is implemented successfully it will provide to gain a huge amount of productivity and efficiency approximately 50 % or more.

Pull: After implanting improved flow, it is the time to market customer and provide enough measures to improve them. This also makes it easier to transport products as and when needed for example ‘just in time’ manufacturing process of delivery. This means that the customer can often pull the product from you as and when needed more likely in weeks as a substitute of months. Therefore, as a results product do not to be built in advance by the organization thus lowering the cost of expensive storing of inventory that are always needs to be managed and it is also a time saving as well as money saving for  the provider, manufacturer and the customer (Panwar et al., 2015).

Lean Management Benefits for Organizations

Perfection: All the above four steps a very vital role and accomplishing them successfully is a great start, but the last step is possibly the most important. Therefore, it makes Lean Management opinion and process development a very crucial part of corporate culture.

Moreover, it is very important to understand that the concepts of Lean are not basically a static system and requires constant effort and observation to make it perfect. Therefore, it is not only the job of the organization but also all the employees must be involved in implementing Lean concepts within their organizations (Dombrowski and Mielke 2013).

Companies like Nike, Intel, Ford and Toyota uses the Lean Management process to increase their productivity and ensure that their customer is getting high value of services and products accordingly. All the above mentioned organizations uses all the Lean Management concepts in order to increase efficacy in their operation management.

In an operation context, Virgin Atlantic will be very much beneficial if they apply all the concepts of Lean Management in their business operations as Lean management helps to appreciate the customer value and always focus its key processes and increase it. According to the researcher, the crucial goal of Lean Management concepts are to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has the ability to reduce and eliminate waste or zero waste. Moreover, Virgin Atlantic will be able to satisfy their customers consistently by producing the products and services according to their preferences by pulling it from the value stream and using the least amount amount of resources which includes indulgence of all the employees in a constant process of development (Panwar et al., 2015).

Therefore, to reduce the generation of waste in the process of operations management and increase efficacy it is very important that Virgin Atlantic implement Lean Management concepts and principles that will provide them to earn a competitive advantage in the market place (Ward and Sobek 2014). As well as they will be able to handle the needs and wants of their different customer with providing great amount of quality services to them.

References:

Bhasin, S., 2015. Lean management beyond manufacturing (Vol. 10, pp. 978-3). New York, NY: Springer International Publishing.

Bicheno, J. and Holweg, M., 2016. The Lean toolbox: The essential guide to Lean transformation. Picsie Books.

Chiarini, A., Found, P. and Rich, N. eds., 2015. Understanding the Lean Enterprise: Strategies, Methodologies, and Principles for a More Responsive Organization. Springer.

Clark, D.M., Silvester, K. and Knowles, S., 2013. Lean management systems: creating a culture of continuous quality improvement. Journal of clinical pathology, 66(8), pp.638-643.

Dombrowski, U. and Mielke, T., 2013. Lean leadership–fundamental principles and their application. Procedia CIRP, 7, pp.569-574.

Fullerton, R.R., Kennedy, F.A. and Widener, S.K., 2014. Lean manufacturing and firm performance: The incremental contribution of lean management accounting practices. Journal of Operations Management, 32(7), pp.414-428.

Hajmohammad, S., Vachon, S., Klassen, R.D. and Gavronski, I., 2013. Reprint of Lean management and supply management: their role in green practices and performance. Journal of Cleaner Production, 56, pp.86-93.

Martínez-Jurado, P.J. and Moyano-Fuentes, J., 2014. Lean management, supply chain management and sustainability: a literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 85, pp.134-150.

McIntosh, B., Sheppy, B. and Cohen, I., 2014. Illusion or delusion–Lean management in the health sector. International journal of health care quality assurance, 27(6), pp.482-492.

Panwar, A., Nepal, B.P., Jain, R. and Rathore, A.P.S., 2015. On the adoption of lean manufacturing principles in process industries. Production Planning & Control, 26(7), pp.564-587.

Poksinska, B., Swartling, D. and Drotz, E., 2013. The daily work of Lean leaders–lessons from manufacturing and healthcare. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(7-8), pp.886-898.

Stanton, P., Gough, R., Ballardie, R., Bartram, T., Bamber, G.J. and Sohal, A., 2014. Implementing lean management/Six Sigma in hospitals: beyond empowerment or work intensification?. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(21), pp.2926-2940.

Teich, S.T. and Faddoul, F.F., 2013. Lean management—the journey from Toyota to healthcare. Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, 4(2).

Virginatlantic.com. (2017). Our story | Virgin Atlantic. [online] Available at: https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/footer/our-story.html [Accessed 19 Mar. 2017].

Ward, A.C. and Sobek II, D.K., 2014. Lean product and process development. Lean Enterprise Institute.

Wisner, J.D., Tan, K.C. and Leong, G.K., 2014. Principles of supply chain management: A balanced approach. Cengage Learning.

Yang, T., Kuo, Y., Su, C.T. and Hou, C.L., 2015. Lean production system design for fishing net manufacturing using lean principles and simulation optimization. Journal of manufacturing systems, 34, pp.66-73.

Zhou, B., 2016. Lean principles, practices, and impacts: a study on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Annals of Operations Research, 241(1-2), pp.457-474.

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