Our Lean Journey - County Battery

Since 2015, we have implemented a 2 second lean system into our day-to-day practices, and have been continuously improving ever since. From the smallest of savings to changing entire processes, we all strive to improve every single day.

What is Lean?

2 Second Lean is a practice to help streamline your life and make everyday tasks easier and quicker. Here is a basic history of Lean culture throughout the years:

Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin (1793), a machine that would separate cotton fibre from seeds and seedpods helping with the mass production of cotton. He is often credited with the idea of interchangeable parts, which he championed for years as a musket manufacturer,

The idea of mass production predated Whitney, although he was the person who promoted and made it more popular, Interchangeability of parts can be traced back as far as the Punic Wars through both archaeological remains and written accounts. In 1900, Frederick Taylor focused on individual workers and their methods of performing work. Performed many studies on creating and maintaining standardised work.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Over the next 100 years breakthroughs in mass production in various fields were made at a steady rate, In early 1900 Frederick Winslow Taylor started looking at how individual workers were motivated. His Theory of Scientific Management suggested that workers do not naturally enjoy work and are mainly motivated by pay. Managers should break down production into small tasks so that workers can be trained on that individual task to a high level. Workers are then paid according to the number of items they produce (piece work).

The concept of applying science to management was sound but Taylor simply ignored the behavioural sciences.

Frank Gilbreth

Frank Gilbreth (Cheaper By The Dozen) added Motion Study and invented Process Charting. Process charts focused attention on all work elements including those non value-added elements which normally occur between the 'official' elements.

Lillian Gilbreth brought psychology into the mix by studying the motivations of workers and how attitudes affected the outcome of a process. There were, of course, many other contributors. These were the people who originated the idea of 'eliminating waste', a key tenet of Just In Time and Lean Manufacturing.

Henry Ford

In around 1910 Henry Ford and Charles E. Sorensen developed a system that took all the elements of a manufacturing system (people machines and products) and arranged them into a continuous process for manufacturing the Model T Ford. Ford is considered by many to be the first practitioner of Lean Manufacturing

The Ford production depended on Frederik Taylors piece work system and the prosperity of the 1920's and the growth of labour unions produced conflict with the Ford system. Varieties in vehicle models and colours did not fit well with the Ford factories

Alfred P. Sloan

At General Motors Alfred P Sloan took a different approach to production and developed systems that could better cope with the variance of different models. Sloan used the advert  “a car for every purse and purpose”  Where Ford stuck with one model. By the mid 1930’s General Motors had passed Ford in domination of the automotive market.

William Edwards Denning

William Edwards Deming championed what he called the Shewhart Cycle which had evolved into the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) In August 1950 at the Hakone Convention Centre in Tokyo, when Deming delivered a speech on what he called "Statistical Product Quality Administration". Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's reputation for innovative, high-quality products, and for its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact on Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Being honoured in Japan in 1951 with the establishment of the Deming Prize.

Taiichi Ohno

At Toyota Motor Company, Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, began to incorporate Ford production, Statistical Process Control and other techniques into an approach called the Toyota Production System or Just in Time Manufacturing.

Toyota soon discovered that factory workers had far more to contribute than just muscle power. This discovery probably originated in the Quality Circle movement which evolved into Kaizen groups and similar worker participation schemes Ishikawa, Deming, and Juan all made major contributions to the quality movement

From this, the need for team collaboration and cellular manufacturing to efficiently manufacture with product variety was born.

The Ford system was based around a single, never-changing product. It did not cope well with multiple or new products. Shingo, at Ohno’s suggestion, went to work on the setup and changeover problem. Reducing setups to minutes and seconds allowed small batches and an almost continuous flow like the original Ford concept. It introduced a flexibility that Henry Ford thought he did not need.

Paul A. Akers

Norman Bodek translated the works of Shingo and Ohno in to English and some of that knowledge spread around the world.

Many consultants and innovators have worked to develop or copy the Toyota Production System with different measures of success. One of the most successful of these is Paul Akers with his 2 second Lean approach.