Reduce Waste in Automotive Manufacturing to Increase Profitability

This manufacturing methodology was created by Toyota but has since spread to almost every industry in the world. However, lean manufacturing has spread throughout the world of automotive manufacturing and has been influencing manufacturing decisions for years.

Today, we’re going to explore how lean manufacturing can help companies in the automotive manufacturing business reduce waste while increasing profitability. We’ll briefly discuss the basic principles of lean manufacturing, and then dive into how it can help you reduce the seven key types of waste.

What Is Lean Manufacturing in the Automobile Industry?

The goal of lean manufacturing is to reduce operating costs to their absolute minimum while simultaneously improving productivity. Achieving these goals calls for adopting a lean production philosophy and removing features and activities in the production process that do not add value to the finished product. There are five basic lean manufacturing principles that help guide lean manufacturing operations in the automotive industry.

1. Identify the aspects of your vehicle that truly add value, based on the perspective of the customer
2. Thoroughly document every step in the target process
3. Create a seamless flow between all of the processes in question
4. Only produce what is requested by the customer
5. Continue to strive for perfection, which includes constantly reducing waste and maintaining an efficient production process

Enacting each of these principles might call for a complete overhaul of an entire production process that may be decades-old. This might seem excessive, but overhauling old processes is essential for eliminating waste in automotive manufacturing.

Lean Manufacturing Can Reduce the Seven Types of Waste

It’s important to focus on continuously improving processes in production activities in order to truly reduce waste. There are seven types of waste that are created by automotive manufacturers, and lean manufacturing can help reduce each of them. 

1. Overproduction: Producing more of any given component will result in excess inventory. This means wasted storage space, raw materials, and capital tied up in pointless inventory. A tier one automotive supplier may actually benefit from implementing a tighter inventory control and decreasing production if the products are simply sitting in storage.
2. Inventory: This type of waste refers to materials that are not processed. Storing these materials is a type of waste, as is all of the effort put into transporting the waste to your manufacturing plant. Some types of components may even deteriorate while waiting to be used.
3. Motion: Wasted motion is any type of excessive movement, whether it’s by a machine or a person, that has the potential to be minimized. Excessive motion can wear out machines faster than necessary, or fatigue workers.
4. Defects: A defective product means a complete waste of raw materials, energy, and labor. Eliminating the potential for defects, or at least trying, will greatly reduce waste.
5. Overprocessing: This type of waste is any process that isn’t strictly necessary. For example, painting a car component that nobody will actually see. Examining processes helps eliminate this type of manufacturing waste, especially for a busy automotive supplier.
6. Waiting: If one step of the production process is regularly waiting on other steps to be completed, this is a significant source of waste. Focusing on the overall production flow is essential for eliminating this type of waste.
7. Transport: Needlessly moving materials from one location to another is a source of wasted time and energy. Thoroughly examine any manufacturing process that calls for moving materials around the facility, or even between facilities.

Embrace Lean Manufacturing With GN

Lean manufacturing can greatly help automotive manufacturing companies reduce the seven common types of waste. Embracing lean manufacturing techniques and using lean manufacturing tools will continually transform processes until the waste is at its absolute minimum.

GN is a leading manufacturer trusted by some of the biggest names in the automotive industry. Find out how top automotive companies are leveraging GN 4.0 to transform their approaches to manufacturing.