You’ve heard enough yapping about continuous improvement; time to watch some lean-inspired videos. I’ve assembled a series of YouTube clips that take you from lean manufacturing basics all the way to full-scale lean production. Follow the links below for a look at lean manufacturing from beginning to end.

First, Set the Right Attitude:

The Ten Commandments of Lean Manufacturing & Six Sigma

If lean manufacturing is a religion unto itself, this offering from the Gemba Academy presents its 10 commandments. These 10 credos lay the groundwork for a lean expedition. The focus here is on attitudes, since getting those right at the start can facilitate your ascent. Short of that, you’ll spend a lot of time working ineffectively toward a peak you can’t summit.

Then Stop for Breakfast:

Toast Kaizen – An Introduction to Lean Manufacturing

The Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, a non-profit resource, starts thinking about lean practices early each morning — in the case of GBMP’s president and Shingo Prize winner, Bruce Hamilton, when he makes toast for breakfast. This YouTube clip is really a plug for the full 30-minute video course that you can receive from the GBMP, but it inspires the viewer to think about lean processes in everyday activities, which helps instill lean thinking in everything we do.

Create an Efficient Work Area:

A Lean Work Cell at Work

You can feel the rhythm of repetition in this video, as a worker at an unnamed manufacturing site completes a series of machining tasks that draw her around a circuit inside a work cell. Even the sound of the presses and other machinery lend a certain tempo to the tasks, and you can see the standardization of processes that governs the chain of activities. When some people picture a typical lean work cell, they envision shiny new equipment, but this clip shows that the age of the machinery is less important than the arrangement of tasks and the reduction of idle time.

And Tie It All Together:

Lean Manufacturing at Toyota Plant, Kentucky

This video delivers a highly visual peek at the processes that facilitate auto manufacturing at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, the company’s largest U.S. plant. As a complete fabrication and assembly shop, TMMK demonstrates the full gamut of production steps needed to create a car, from steel stamping to paint to assembly. The amount of robotic automation dedicated to frame construction is an eye-opener. While you might spot some examples of waste in the process, it’s just as easy to pick up some tips on waste reduction from the folks who established lean more than 50 years ago.

Related: Getting Lean on YouTube

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