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When running any sort of physical production based business, you will often have stock on hand. Instead of only stocking for a short time, there will be a "backup" supply of products that can be called upon as demand changes. This is known as "just in case" manufacturing and is highly common in most industries. However, several decades ago, the rise of lean business gave way to the concept of "just in time" manufacturing. In a just in time, or JIT, system, products are made as they are demanded and there is little to (ideally) no back-stock at any time. Why go lean? The idea behind JIT manufacturing is that one can eliminate several kinds of waste by taking away the need to keep inventory of excess stock. From now on, equate "stock" to "excess stock" or the concept of having too much on hand, because in a JIT environment "stock" doesn't really exist outside of individual orders. When you don't have to keep inventory, employees free up their time for other projects and tasks. Also, you have less paperwork to manage, and can focus on other things, like workplace safety, new profitability angles and marketing strategies, etc. Another reason to go to a JIT model is that you increase accountability of management. Because you have no inventory to fall back on in a JIT situation, inventory cannot be used as a crutch to make up for other problems. Slow, inefficient production is often masked by a stockpile of inventory, making it harder to realize certain areas of production may need improvement - these may include machine functionality, worker habits, reliability, and inadequate space management. Another huge place you save by adopting this method is in transportation. Materials do not need to be stocked at various sites and you need to do much less transporting. You will eliminate time wasted in transit when there is traffic or road congestion, and you'll even be more environmentally friendly by reducing fuel burned for shipping purposes

Tips & Tricks for Efficiently Tracking Lean Projects Recently, we wrote about a couple of problems facing many Lean practitioners. These were problems that hindered their learning process and often caused overconfidence. Amongst the advice to help combat these problems arose the need for detailed tracking and note taking with regards to practice and progress. Being able to accurately track not only the effects but also the process of a Lean project is critical to ongoing success, and is a key to stimulating growth amongst not only the receiving end of your project objectives, but also amongst the employees and Lean practitioners themselves. To start off, let's take a look at the current state of Lean project tracking for many Lean practitioners. A recent LinkedIn discussion posed the very question of project tracking, and sought to understand a few different distinct metrics. In addition to measuring the effectiveness of any program when it comes to completion, tracking can also be about measuring the scope of your projects, so that you can accurately project what the effects will be before you actually reach the stage at which you expect them. Part of this "scope" involves tracking exactly who is involved with your project, who is affected, and how they are progressing in their respective tasks. Where we are now First of all, it's important to evaluate the current methods that are prevalent in Lean record keeping. The LinkedIn discussion starter, self-identified as Ian R., mentions in his opening post that, when he last posed the question about a year ago, the consensus was that most practitioners were simply using excel spreadsheets for their tracking needs. While there's nothing wrong with relying on Excel for the basics, other users were quick to offer up some slicker alternatives, signaling a sharp (and welcomed, in our book) departure from some of the more basic methods. Unsurprisingly, there exist several specialist software applications whose n