TABLE OF CONTENTS Benjamin Franklin says: Time is money.
Lean Maintenance is mistaken for a whole host of other efforts. In this section we will distinguish Lean Maintenance from some of the other programs that are occasionally called Lean. We will also show how some efforts in the past were really predecessors to Lean Maintenance.
But first we will discuss a program that is Lean. Kaizen is part of Lean. Kaizen is a Japanese word denoting a philosophy of continual improvement. There are two types of Kaizen that apply to Lean Maintenance; Flow Kaizen-value stream improvement, Point Kaizen-Waste elimination. Kaizen events are short term Lean efforts, where teams blitz a shop and make many improvements at the same time. The event is generally organized around a subject. A good source of information on Kaizen is the Lean Manufacturing Pocket Handbook mentioned in the bibliography.
What would be a good waste reduction project? If we want to be lean, we want to reduce the waste, what would constitute a good project? A good project reduces waste that is obvious. The project should save money directly. Now, there's a huge problem here, with projects that save time (labor). If we are saving (just) labor hours, we grapple with something called phantom savings.
Phantom savings drives accountants nuts; in fact it drives everyone who thinks deeply about it nuts, because phantom savings is not traceable to the companies' financial books. For instance, let's say we save 10 minutes in a...
