Lean and flow manufacturing

Lean is about eliminating waste and flow manufacturing  is the best way to manufacture with the least amount of waste. 
- Waste is any activity that does not add value. 
- Value is any activity that transforms the product in a way the customer is willing to pay for. customers typically don'r want to pay for:

• Overproduction
• Material handling
• Waiting
• Scrap
• Rework
• Inventory
• Overprocessing or even inspection 

- Before we can eliminate waste, we must be able to see it. If we can identify waste, we can target it for elimination. if we can't see it, it will remain.
- The lean steps:
1. Specify value - from the customer, as the customer always defines value
2. Identify the value stream - map all the current steps needed, including value-added and non-value-added, of the product and its components (material flow) and the instructions among all steps (information flow)
3. Create stability - get processes on control: equipment, people and material
4. Make value flow - develop and implement a future state maps where we processes are linked
5. Let customer pull - link customer demand: mix and volume.
6. Pursue perfection - repeat all over again.


This principles help us identify waste and provide ways to help us to reduce it.
w manufacturing is building the product in a continuous manner w/o any stoppages or bracktracking.
We should always try to create continuous one-piece flow first and when we can't flow, we should pull through a signaling method (e.g. kanban)