Gembutsu Lean Manufacturing

My son, Peter Kropf, is the managing partner of Gembutsu LLC, a lean manufacturing consulting firm based in Seattle, Washington.

In it's simplicity, lean manufacturing, also called the Toyota Production System (TPS), is a manufacturing philosophy that was developed in Japan after the 2nd world war as that country found itself in the position of needing to compete with high volume U.S. and European manufacturers.

At its core, the idea behind Lean Manufacturing is to produce with the least amount of waste possible. For the less waste that is incurred during a manufacturing process, the less the total cost will be to produce that product.  In addition to lower costs, removing waste from a process has several other benefits including lower lead-times, higher quality and the ability to respond faster to the myriad of production issues that may arise within a manufacturing plant.

The results of lean manufacturing are accomplished through a concept called a kaizen.  This Japanese word means 'improvement', however over the past 20 years, in the West, the word symbolizes not making small, but frequent changes to a business process.  The idea behind this is that if processes are improved (in the form of waste removal) slowly, each individual change will have relatively little risk associated with it.  However, since changes are also made frequently, these small changes will quickly add up, thereby having a large impact on the whole.

To learn more about Peter, visit Gembutsu LLC.

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