Laboratory Report: Lean In Everyday Life
Introduction
Lean is the production that emphasizes the minimization of the amount of all resources and its main goal is to detect and reduce any activities or inventories that do not add value to an enterprise. We were taught various lean tools and how we can implement them to make systems more effective in different Industries. We had to choose three different lean tools that we applied to various activities that can be found in our everyday life. The first tool I chose to use is “Kaizen”, will be applied towards doing laundry and I will also illustrate it by using the A3 diagram. The second tool I will apply is the “5S” tool, which I will use to organize bathroom cabinet in order to make things easier to locate without stress. The last tool that I will apply to my everyday life is “Kanban system”, I will use this tool to organize different tasks in a visual way that will allow me to complete tasks more effectively.
Kaizen “Good Change”
The Kaizen tool is a “continuous, incremental improvements” to eliminate unnecessary waste. I applied this tool to my problem of having doing laundry. I tend to not fold my clothes after doing laundry. The problem with this method is that I end up having unnecessary clothes on my bed. I applied the Kaizen tool by using an A3 diagram to expand on the problem and work through finding a viable solution to the problem.
5S
The “5S” tool is used to “eliminate waste motion” by reducing time spent looking for a tools or ways to organize the workspace in order for it to be more efficient. This tool will help me organize the cabinet under my bathroom sink because it has steps that can easily eliminate clutter and make space and tools more efficient. Over the course of a week, finding items was easier As seen in the chart above, the 5S system made the cabinet space more visually appealing in the end. In addition to that, it made it much easier to locate items for use and know exactly what I had so that I would not buy excess. The next step in addressing the problem would be to make improvements to the system I created. I could add labels to the bins under the cabinet for clarification or even create a checklist of all the items in the cabinet so that I could more easily keep track of when things run out
Kanban System
The Kanban system is “a production control approach that uses containers, cards, or visual cues to control the production and movement of goods through the supply chain”. When this tool is applied to everyday life, it can be used as a sort of organizer to manage tasks or work better. I applied this tool to organizing and managing the important things I had to do during a busy midterm week. The problem was the fact that during midterm week, I had a lot of assignments and studying that needed to be done. I am sometimes forgetful, and this can lead to missing assignments or last-minute work. This tool allowed for me to clearly list all my assignments in a visual aid to keep track of the progress and push them through to completion.
To apply the tool, I first compiled a list of all the assignments I had due as well as important tasks I had to complete by the end of the week. I sectioned off a black board into three sections: “To-do”, “Doing”, and “Done”. All of tasks started off being listed in the “To-do” column. They were color-coded and arranged in order of importance. The items closer to the top of the list were in red because they were tasks with more of a time urgency. Those were assignments with due dates earlier in the week. The items in yellow were next down the list and needed to be completed by the mid-week mark. The items in green were things that could be put off until the end of the week because they were not as urgent. As I began working on a task, I would draw an arrow through it, crossing the task into the next section of “Doing”. I tried to have only two items in the “Doing” section at once, so as not to overwhelm myself. As the tasks were completed, another arrow was drawn through, crossing it into the next section of “Done”.
The results of applying the tool were that it made it easier to organize tasks and facilitate moving them through each section until they were completed. Because of the color coding and the order, the progress could be more easily tracked. At the beginning of the week, there was a long list of tasks that needed to be completed, but at the end, all the tasks were able to be smoothly completed. The following series of pictures shows the progression of the chart throughout the week. The next step to addressing the problem would be to continue using this system for assignments and important tasks from week to week.
Conclusion
In doing this exercise, I was able to put real world meaning to the information learned in class. The extra research done in order to complete the assignment also furthered my knowledge on the various lean tools and how they can be applied both in industry and in everyday life. I learned that almost any system can be improved, whether incrementally or all at once. As I did the project, the fact that visual aids are a big component in the different tools was very evident. The various charts and diagrams helped tremendously when it came to organizing the information and made all the components needed to apply the tools easier to understand. Overall, I got a good insight on how to implement lean systems and how the positive benefits of lean tools.
