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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, lean manufacturing means: A way of running production that aims to deliver what the customer needs with the least waste of time, material and effort, based on the Toyota Production System.

In Turkish: yalın üretim

How it is used

Used in strategy, training and improvement work. Companies implement or adopt lean manufacturing, and people often just say 'lean' (a lean project, lean tools, going lean). The term was made popular by the 1990 book 'The Machine That Changed the World'.

Example sentences

  1. Since we started lean manufacturing, the floor space used for inventory has dropped by a third.

  2. All new supervisors take a two-day course in lean manufacturing.

Common collocations

  • implement lean manufacturing
  • lean tools
  • lean transformation
  • lean principles
  • wasteIn lean thinking, any activity that uses time or resources but adds no value for the customer, such as waiting, extra movement or making too much.
  • kaizenA Japanese word for 'change for the better', used for small, steady improvements made by everyone, and for a short, focused improvement event.
  • value stream mappingA lean method of drawing all the steps, material flows and information flows needed to make a product, to see where time is lost and plan improvements. Often shortened to VSM.
  • just-in-timeA production approach in which materials and parts arrive exactly when they are needed and in the quantity needed, so very little inventory is kept. Often shortened to JIT.
  • 5SA workplace organization method with five steps: sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain. It keeps work areas clean, tidy and easy to manage.

More terms: Lean Manufacturing

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