Lean manufacturing is a concept that has been embraced by production facilities around the world to improve production efficiencies and therefore reduce customer costs. Many of the lean manufacturing processes look at how manufacturing operations are performed and determine how they can be optimized. As lean manufacturing can lead to reduced production costs and improved quality, many large and small manufacturing facilities have embraced the concept.

What is Lean Manufacturing?
At its simplest, lean manufacturing is a way of thinking and developing manufacturing processes to minimize inefficiencies in production and waste in resources. The four goals of lean manufacturing are:

1. Improve Product and Process Quality
2. Minimize Waste
3. Reduce Production and Process Time
4. Reduce Costs

By improving quality, fewer defective products are produced, minimizing waste, and therefore reducing costs. By reducing production times, labor and facility costs per part are reduced.

Large manufacturers, such as Toyota’s automobile manufacturing facilities, as well as smaller manufacturers, such as refrigeration equipment manufacturer Hussmann Corporation, rely on lean manufacturing to improve their quality and reduce costs.