Qualities of a Good Lean Manufacturing Consultant

Thousands of manufacturers today embrace lean manufacturing techniques as part of their core business strategies. These techniques help the modern manufacturer to tighten processes and bring waste to a minimum while raising productivity.

Lean techniques have not been with us for very long. It was in the 80s that Toyota, the automakers, achieved immense success with them that they spread globally and are now embraced as revolutionary techniques in the manufacturing process.

If you are seeking to introduce or improve on your existing lean techniques, you will need the services of TXM Lean consultants. He will bring about the necessary changes to your process and overall output. A good lean manufacturing consultant will have the following qualities:

  • Knowledgeable: Your consultant must be knowledgeable on these lean manufacturing techniques and their application in modern processes. This knowledge is what they ill use to influence positively the manufacturing process at your plant.
  • Experience: A lean consultant has years of successful implementation of these techniques and strategies in different companies and in different industries. This wealth of experience is what he will draw from when seeking to implement lean manufacturing at your plant.
  • An agent of change: He should be the kind of person who will impart to your staff the importance of changing the process they are used to and introduce the new techniques as the real deal in the plants processes.
  • Team player: your lean consultant is not a lone ranger. He will seek to bring all the concerned people on board in the implementation of the techniques. The fact that everybody will be involved means that the success rate ill be higher as everybody will know exactly what is expected of them and why.
  • Cooperative: Your consultant will have to be a cooperative person in that he will take you through the process’ stages and levels of implementation while at the same time seeking your output as the key person in the whole deal.
  • Value addition oriented: your consultant is expected to bring about changes that will improve the value of the product to give the users of such products an enhanced satisfaction as a result.
  • Good understanding of customers and supply chain: A good lean consultant will endeavor to understand the people who consume your goods and their expectations fro the products they consume from your plant. He will also seek to understand the supply chain so as to assess the inputs and see how they can be incorporated into the new way of doing thins at the plant.
  • Trainers: your consultant must be a trainer and that is by passing on his skills and knowledge to your staff at all levels so that the process will be ongoing even when your relationship with him comes to an end.

A good lean consultant will give you the edge in manufacturing you have been looking. He will tailor these techniques to your unique situation and your company will be the richer for it.