Most manufacturers are currently or have been involved in some form of lean process. Your company may be well down the path or just starting out, or your customers or suppliers may be going lean. The Lean Enterprise Institute characterizes lean as “creating more value for customers with fewer resources.” In other words, lean maintains a strong focus on both the customer and process efficiency.
Because businesses operate for profit, lean is used as a way of reducing costs; logical business people typically look first to the areas where costs are most visible: manufacturing. As Figures 1 and 2 show, manufacturing-related costs overshadow other business costs in our industry. Both charts use data midpoints for clarity, thus the relative size of the pie segments is approximate. Adhesive and coating companies were chosen since many firms have elements of both.