Lean Manufacturing is being implemented in thousands of corporations today. Although the discipline has been in existence for over two decades, only the largest corporations have any long term use of the tools.

1. Find a good training course. Plenty of corporations practice Lean Manufacturing, and there is an education market for it. Everyone from consultants to universities has been providing classes and workshops. When selecting a good training course, it is critical to learn from someone that has real world experience applying lean manufacturing principles.

2. Select your experts carefully and train. After finding a good course or two and learning the basic principles of lean manufacturing, enable a few individuals to become experts and share their knowledge with others.

3. Train all employees who are involved. Implementing lean manufacturing requires a large percentage of employees working together to discover non value added activities within the chain.

4. Learn by doing. Learn as much as possible about a concept, then begin to apply it. A good example is 5S. When 5S is implemented correctly, it not only provides order and improved housekeeping; it also enhances equipment and improves efficiency.

5. Hire an expert. Lean manufacturing isn’t something you can learn overnight. It is difficult to practice and requires years of study to master. This is the only option to go directly from course training to successful implementation. An expert has seen the every failure from implementation practices to staff. They will be able to continue to train and help guide the team through the roadmap on the journey to a state of lean even after the consultation is over.

6. Observe other successful lean implementations. It is easy to find companies that will allow you to see their lean implementation. The difficult part is finding a successful implementation. If the implementation wasn’t successful, they wouldn’t be hiring more professionals.

7. Learn from failure. There will be failures in a lean implementation.

Fortunately, our manufacturing insurance experts will sit down with you and assess your current situation. No two manufacturers are completely alike. Thus our goal is to set you up with only the coverage you really need to properly cover your business.

You might need coverage for your entire facility, including machinery, plant, loss of profit, and both public and product liability. In some cases, you’ll want to add additional coverage like employer’s liability, computer breakdown, employee theft or fraud, and general property protection.

Give MHB Insurance a call at 914-737-3430, our manufacturing specialists are standing by to answer your questions.