Agile Manufacturing vs Lean Manufacturing: Are They Different?

In today's fast-paced business environment, staying competitive and efficient is crucial for manufacturers. Two popular methodologies, Agile Manufacturing and Lean Manufacturing, have emerged as powerful strategies for optimizing production processes. But what exactly sets them apart? In this blog,
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Published on:
20 December 2023
Updated on:
07 October 2024

Project managers in manufacturing frequently use the terms agile manufacturing and lean manufacturing. Sometimes, they’re used interchangeably; many even believe they refer to the same concept. After all, anything that’s lean is also agile, and vice versa, right?

However, agile manufacturing and lean manufacturing are, in fact, two separate terms with differing philosophies and purposes. Yet, what are the differences between the two?

In this article, we will begin by introducing the two philosophies’ fundamental concepts. Afterward, we will provide an agile manufacturing vs lean manufacturing comparison to highlight the differences and similarities between the two.

Furthermore, we will inform you on the digital tools needed to implement agile manufacturing in your plant. At the end of this article, we will also provide a lean manufacturing e-book PDF that you can freely download. Thus, you will have a reference for your transition into agile manufacturing.

The History of the Agile Mindset

The “agile” mindset comes from the IT industry, where technological developments happen rapidly.  In 2001, 14 tech company founders, C-level executives, and senior software developers in the US authored the Agile Manifesto, which consists of 12 guiding principles.

Some of these principles are software development-oriented, while others are generic and can be applied to any industry. Therefore, many industrial engineers integrated and used the concept of an agile mindset in manufacturing. This led to the foundation of the agile manufacturing philosophy we know today.

What is Agile in Manufacturing?

Agile manufacturing is a philosophy where manufacturers have to be as flexible as possible. Flexible here means being able to change and adapt their products to satisfy market demands quickly. Customer demands and preferences rapidly change with time, and any organization must be able to keep up with this change to be the market leader.

For example, landline telephones dominated the telecommunications sector until mobile phones took over. This transition happened rapidly, and some affected companies could not keep up and were left out. Yet, others, such as AT&T, were agile enough to adapt their products and services and still thrive today.

Thus,  adaptability to change is the most significant factor in determining whether an organization can survive the test of time. A Harvard Business School study involving 1,500 executives in 90 countries found that adaptability is the most important trait for any business leader. Hence, being able to future-proof your business is critical, regardless of your industry.

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Agile Manufacturing Principles

Despite its IT roots, the concept of agile has been adapted to suit the manufacturing sector. Here are the fundamental principles of agile manufacturing:

Flowchart titled

Continuous Product Improvement

What is Continuous Product Improvement?

Innovation is a never-ending process. New goods and product updates are developed daily in any industry and released to the market.

To stay ahead of your competitors, you must have a relentless mentality of continuous improvement. This means increasing the quality and features of your existing products and developing new products if deemed necessary by the market. The saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply in agile manufacturing.

Real-Life Example

The mobile phone industry is a perfect example of this principle. Between 2007 and October 2023, Apple has released at least 42 iPhone variants. It means that, on average, there are 2.625 iPhone models released per year or a new model around every 4.5 months.

If that seems impressive, take a look at Samsung. In the same timeframe, it has released hundreds of Samsung Galaxy smartphone variants. This wide variety of product choices results from a customer segmentation strategy to catch customers from all budget segments.

These continuous product improvements have translated into Samsung’s dominance in the global smartphone industry. As of October 2023, Samsung had the world’s largest smartphone market share in all three quarters of 2023, ahead of competitors like Apple and Xiaomi.

Bottom-up Approach

What Is the Bottom-up Approach?

In conventional business strategies, upper management creates a business plan and sets targets, while everyone below follows this plan and strives to achieve these targets. However, agile manufacturers implement a bottom-up approach, which is the opposite of this conventional top-down idea.

Under this approach, small teams are formed within an organization. These teams are responsible for a specific product. They first test what works and what doesn’t in their product. Then, their findings are forwarded to upper management, and these findings are used to determine the overall corporate strategy.

A bottom-up approach has many advantages over a top-down one, such as:

  • Faster innovations due to rapid, localized R&D
  • Allows quicker problem-solving if there are issues along the way
  • Encourages all employees to be proactive and contribute to product development
  • Less bureaucratic hassles

Real-Life Example

There are countless examples of organizations that have successfully implemented the bottom-up approach in their business. For instance, Google has the “20% time rule”, where employees are free to spend 20% of their working hours on any side activity that benefits Google.

This rule grants autonomy to Google employees and incentivizes them to go above and beyond to pursue projects that correspond to their interests. The result? Some of Google’s well-known products, such as AdSense and Google News, were created under this system.

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Flexibility in Production

What Does It Mean to Be Flexible?

Any agile manufacturer must always be flexible in all aspects of its production. Flexible means being able to change its products rapidly to meet market demands.

Changing a product can mean:

  • Fixing a bug/defect in a product
  • Adding/removing a feature
  • Improving an existing feature
  • Adding/removing a product from your assembly line
  • Increasing/decreasing its price
  • And various other forms of change
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Real-Life Example

The ice cream industry is a prime example of a place where manufacturers must be agile. In the UK, for example, ice cream sales figures typically peak in the summer months of June-August and plummet by around 50% in the winter months of December-February.

Thus, ice cream manufacturers must be able to quickly boost their production to meet high demand in the summer months. Meanwhile, they also need to be able to cut production in half to accommodate lower sales in the winter months.

Ice cream manufacturers adopt different strategies to cope with this extreme demand shift. Some prefer to lower production output, which significantly reduces their yearly revenues.

Meanwhile, ice cream manufacturers who have fully embraced the agile mentality in manufacturing, such as Ben & Jerry’s, have solutions to keep their revenues stable.

Ben & Jerry’s solution is to market seasonal Christmas-themed flavors such as Gingerbread Cookie,  mint-flavored Minter Wonderland, and Speculoos. This is a good business strategy for adjusting to the changing customer preferences.

Agile Augmentation

What Is Agile Augmentation?

The final principle of agile manufacturing is agile augmentation. It refers to the ability to quickly expand your production capacity without disrupting the existing production process. This expansion can come in the form of:

  • Installing new production machinery
  • Introducing new production techniques
  • Integrating the latest production software and technologies
  • Increasing existing human resources on the shop floor

Since this is a scalability-related principle, it applies not only to expansion but also to reduction. Any agile manufacturer can scale down its production without causing any halt or pause in the assembly line.

Real-Life Example

Tesla’s modular, pre-fabricated factory sections are a good example. Tesla’s newest factories, such as its Berlin Gigafactory. This gigantic 740-acre plant only took 22 months to finish, which is impressive for a massive facility.

Using this technique over conventional in-site construction has several advantages, such as faster construction time, synchronized quality control, and lower construction costs. Its modular factory sections are also easy to install and remove, allowing easy and quick production scalability.

Characteristics of an Agile Organization

Any manufacturer that has adequately applied the above principles can be considered agile. There are 4 noticeable characteristics of an agile manufacturer:

A square graphic divided into four quadrants, each illustrating blue icons and text:

Modular Product Design

The most visible characteristic of an agile organization in manufacturing is its modular product design. A product can be seen as modular if it consists of detachable parts, and these parts can still function independently if separated.

Implementing modular design on your product brings many benefits, such as:

  • Lower production cost, as one module type can be used in multiple products
  • Your customers can customize your products to suit their needs more easily
  • Better product quality and safety, as each module can still function independently if other modules malfunction
  • Easier production scalability
  • Faster research & development and any update to your products, as a change to one module doesn’t impact other modules – removing the need to re-design the product from scratch
  • Effortless product maintenance, as customers only need to fix the broken module instead of the entire product
  • Fewer components inventory needed on your shop floor, saving storage-related costs

An example of successful modular product design is the rising popularity of self-assembled PCs. Many users, particularly video game enthusiasts, prefer to build their own PC from scratch. This includes finding their motherboard, processor, memory system, and other PC components and assembling them at home.

Many considerations motivate this market segment to choose modular PCs over fully-built products from existing PC vendors. This includes greater freedom in determining the PC’s performance, lower overall purchasing cost, and insufficient personalization options from existing PC vendors.

Digitally Connected to Customers and Employees

Another trademark of an agile manufacturer is that it’s always digitally connected to its customers and employees. This digital connection is necessary for a quick transfer of information.

Why and How Should You Be Digitally Connected to Your Customers?

For example, you would want to inform your customers immediately if you’re having promotion programs, such as:

  • Product discounts
  • Buy 1 get 1 promotion or any bulk discounts
  • A customer loyalty program
  • Releasing a new product
  • And any other forms of promotion

It’s vital that your customers are informed about any of the above ASAP – especially before your competitors reach them first. Sending a push notification to your customers’ mobile phones is the best way to do this.

There are several ways that you can send a push notification to your customers, which are:

  • Using a dedicated mobile phone app (You must first incentivize customers to download your app, such as by giving discounts that are only accessible after customers download and register themselves to your app)
  • Blasting a promotion email to your customers. A promotion is only sent whenever a promotion is separate from your regularly recurring email newsletter. Check out Flodesk’s strategy to prevent your emails from being labeled as spam in your customers’ inboxes.
  • Sending messages from your organization’s business account in Instant messenger apps, such as WhatsApp and through SMS

It’s best to have convincing Call to Action (CTA) phrases in these push notifications. This can include phrases like “register now”, “try for free”, “talk to us”, and other actionable phrases. Check out Hootsuite’s Tips on how to write customer-compelling CTAs.

It’s also recommended to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. With it, you can have a more organized customer engagement strategy. Additionally, you can automate some of your customer engagement activities, saving your employees valuable time.

Why Should You Be Digitally Connected to Your Employees? And How?

Besides digitally engaging your customers, it’s equally essential to be constantly connected to your employees. Your employees must always be equipped with the latest corporate updates. That way, they can immediately sync their work with these updates.

Similar to customer engagement, it’s great to send push notifications to your employees’ devices, as it’s the fastest way to spread internal information. The best way to do this is by having an internal communication platform like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat.

Be sure only to send relevant information to concerned employees. Too many irrelevant push notifications can distract and slow your employees’ workflow.

For example, your plant has 5 assembly lines, and you plan to do preventive maintenance in assembly line No.3. It’s important to send a push notification to assembly line No.3 employees and others involved (such as quality compliance officers). It would be unnecessary to send a push notification to the whole plant.

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Agile Business Partnerships

Why Do Organizations Collaborate?

In the business world, partnering with other organizations is often necessary. Business partnerships happen when two or more organizations collaborate to achieve a common goal. Under a partnership, organizations can combine their resources, such as:

  • Expertise and know-how in one or more fields
  • Product range
  • Production and distribution facilities
  • Financial resources
  • Existing consumer base
  • Brand reputation
  • Other forms of resources

For instance, Apple and Nike have partnered to launch the Apple Watch Nike series. Both organizations have entirely different backgrounds.: Apple is a tech company mainly producing computer hardware, while Nike manufactures sports apparel.

Apple uses its existing expertise and resources to make smartwatches. At the same time, Nike integrated its brand reputation and the large user base of its popular Nike Run Club app into these smartwatches.

This fruitful collaboration has been beneficial for both companies. Apple has held the world’s largest market share for smartwatches since the 2nd quarter of 2015.  Apple’s dominance persists as of the latest market data (the 2nd quarter of 2023). Meanwhile, Nike’s Run Club app became one of the most downloaded running apps on the Apple App Store.

What Is an Agile Business Partnership?

In agile manufacturing, partnerships with other organizations must be agile. Agile means that a collaboration between your organization and other organizations must have the following qualities:

  • All partnerships should bring concrete benefits to your organization
  • Your partner organization’s goals should align with yours
  • Any partnership contract should be drawn for a short or undetermined period. Long-term contracts should be avoided
  • The partnership must be easily scalable
  • It does not limit partnerships with other organizations

Continuous Employee Training

And, of course, continuously training employees is another characteristic of an agile manufacturer. Everything is constantly evolving in manufacturing, be it plant machinery or production techniques.

Add that to never-ending changes in customer demands and market trends. As the famous saying goes: “nothing is unchanging except change itself.”

To stay ahead of your competitors, your employees must be able to use the most advanced technology and implement the latest production techniques. They must also be able to read and predict the newest market trends. And to ensure that, organizing employee training programs now and then is a necessity.

Lean Manufacturing

Now that agile manufacturing has been thoroughly discussed, it’s time to move to the following concept: lean manufacturing. Despite their similar names, agile and lean manufacturing are two separate concepts – with different principles and goals.

What Is Lean Manufacturing?

Before going with the agile manufacturing vs lean manufacturing comparison, it’s important to know what lean manufacturing is. It’s a concept that was popularized by the Toyota’s Production System (TPS).

Industrial engineer Taiichi Ōhno introduced the TPS after visiting the US in 1956. There, he learned the best practices of American auto manufacturers. He was also inspired by the then-new concept of supermarkets, where customers can just “pull” the products they want from the shelves.

The TPS has a legendary motto: “making only what’s needed, when it’s needed, and in the quantity needed.” This motto is a perfect example of lean manufacturing in action. An organization can be considered “lean” if it has implemented the 5 principles and is free from the 8 lean manufacturing wastes.

Besides these 5 core principles, the lean manufacturing doctrine also consists of several derivative philosophies, such as Kaizen, Jidoka, Heijunka, and the Just-in-Time Production System.

Furthermore, there are other lean manufacturing philosophies that originated from outside Toyota, such as First Time Right.

The 8 Forms of Waste in Lean Manufacturing

Before going deeper into the 5 lean manufacturing principles, you’ll need first to know the 8 forms of waste. After all, the main idea of lean manufacturing is to eliminate these 8 waste forms, which are:

A grid of eight blue icons represents different types of waste in manufacturing. Each icon has a label: Defective Products, Excessive Processing, Overproduction, Idle Resources, Having to Store Items, Unnecessary Motions, Transportation, and Underutilized Human Resources.

The 5 Lean Manufacturing Principles

To be “lean” and remove the 8 forms of waste, an organization must implement the 5 lean manufacturing principles. These principles are a step-by-step guide that needs to be followed to achieve peak production efficiency.

To know more, check out our latest article discussing lean manufacturing principles, examples, and tools and a lean manufacturing e-book that you can download for free.

The 5 lean manufacturing principles are:

A five-step lean manufacturing process is represented in an arrow-shaped flowchart from left to right. Steps include 1. Identifying Customer Value, 2. Value Stream Mapping, 3. Creating a Lean Manufacturing Flow, 4. Establishing a Pull System, and 5. Kaizen (Continuous Improvement).

Principle 1: Identifying What Your Customers Value

Value refers to the benefit your customers get from using your product. Ask yourself: Why are they willing to spend their money to obtain your product?

  • Is it because of the products’ quality?
  • The products’ affordability?
  • The features of these products compared to your competitors’?
  • The simplicity of maintaining the products?
  • How easy is it to find service points and spare parts?
  • Because of the brand’s reputation?
  • Or a combination of everything?

You will need to get your customers’ feedback – which can be obtained through customer satisfaction surveys. You can also consult your sales & customer relations team, as they should have the data on your consumers’ purchasing preferences and common complaints.

Principle 2: Value Stream Mapping

After identifying the values above, you must map the product’s value stream. A value stream is the flow of resources within a product’s life cycle, including:

  1. The materials and components required to manufacture this product
  2. The shipments of these materials and components to your manufacturing plants/warehouses
  3. The storage of these materials and components in your manufacturing plants/warehouses
  4. This product’s entire production process (including quality control)
  5. The transporting and distribution of this product to customers
  6. The use of this product by your customers
  7. The disposal of this product by your customers (including recycling, resale, and scrapping process – if any)

These processes consume resources, either yours, your partner organizations’, or your customers’. Be sure to include all sorts of resources (including time) needed to make the mapped product.

Underneath is an excellent example of value stream mapping from the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.

A value stream map illustration depicting the production process. It starts from customer demand, flows through forecasting, production control, and several manufacturing stages including stamping and welding, before reaching the shipping stage. Various metrics and cycle times are displayed.

It’s best to have a mapping for every single product, as each product has a unique value stream.

Principle 3: Creating a Flow in Lean Manufacturing

After drafting the value stream map, it’s time to inspect it. Do you detect any of the 8 waste forms in your value stream map? If so, take the necessary actions to eliminate these waste forms.

There’s no specific procedure to eliminate the 8 waste forms since they have different characteristics. Thus, each waste form has its specific solutions. Some commonly used lean manufacturing tools include Kanban boards, Andon (alert) systems, and quality management software.

Principle 4: Establishing a Pull System

The next step in implementing lean manufacturing principles is establishing a pull system in your plant. Yet, what is a pull system in lean manufacturing?

In a nutshell, it refers to the idea that a product will only be produced if there’s already a confirmed order from the customer. As if the customer “pulls” the products from the factory themselves.

Here’s an illustration:  If there’s an order for 100 chairs, then a lean manufacturer will only look for materials & components for 100 chairs, assemble these 100 chairs, and then deliver them to the customer. Nothing more, nothing less. Hence, no resources are wasted, and no product storage is necessary.

Just like TPS’s mindset, “making only what’s needed, when it’s needed, and in the quantity needed.”

Principle 5: Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)

To top it all off, a lean manufacturer must internalize the spirit of continuous improvement (kaizen in Japanese) to all its employees. An employee who can think “lean” can see any of the 8 waste forms and independently remove it from the assembly line.

To achieve this, organizing lean manufacturing training programs for your employees is necessary. You can use lean-practicing companies such as Toyota and others as lean manufacturing examples. In fact, Toyota even offers lean manufacturing courses in its Toyota Lean Academy.

Having a daily stand-up meeting for your employees is also an excellent example of lean manufacturing best practices. There, employees shall be asked:

  • Which tasks did you do yesterday? How did it go?
  • Which tasks are you planning to do today?
  • Do you see any obstacles to these tasks?

With it, your employees are fully accountable to each other, and any reported obstacle can be immediately solved together.

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Agile Manufacturing vs Lean Manufacturing: Key Differences

Now that both philosophies have been covered, it’s time to compare agile and lean manufacturing. Where do they differ?  Which philosophy suits your needs better?

IT vs Manufacturing Origins

Before analyzing their characteristics, it’s important to compare the origins of agile & lean manufacturing. The concept of agile comes from the IT industry, where innovations are happening in the blink of an eye.

This culminated in 2001 when 14 tech figures authored the Agile Manifesto. Afterward, its principles are applied to the manufacturing sector, now known as agile manufacturing.

On the other hand, modern lean manufacturing has a purely manufacturing background. It was developed and popularized by Taiichi Ōhno – an industrial engineer at Toyota, after his visit to the US in 1956.

Flexibility vs Certainty

This is the key difference between the agile manufacturing vs lean manufacturing debate. Agile manufacturing focuses on flexibility. A manufacturer must be able to make changes to its product as quickly as possible. Customer expectations must always be met.

Meanwhile, lean manufacturing emphasizes certainty. There’s no room for uncertainty and very little space for product customization.  A product will only be made once there’s a customer order. This order must conform with the manufacturer’s existing capability. Taking orders that are beyond standard product specifications is discouraged.

Bottom-up vs Top-down

Another significant aspect of agile manufacturing vs. lean manufacturing is its implementation. Agile manufacturing advocates for a bottom-up approach.

Employees on the shop floor are the ones responsible for developing and executing the production activities. Meanwhile, managers are merely informed of the latest updates.

On the other hand, implementing lean manufacturing principles requires a top-down approach. Managers are responsible for finding out a product’s value, mapping the value stream, creating a lean flow, and starting a pull-based production system.

Of course, shop floor workers are involved in these processes. But managers are the ones who plan and oversee these plans and coordinate between different departments. Additionally, managers are responsible for projecting the “lean” mentality to their employees.

This difference can be attributed to the cultural differences surrounding these philosophies’ origins. Agile manufacturing comes from the US, where employees are given significant independence and leeway. This allows room for changes and innovation to take place.

Furthermore, the US corporate culture puts a strong emphasis on individual performance.

Conversely, lean manufacturing originated from Japan, known for its hierarchical and top-down corporate culture. Moreover, Japanese employees and employers tend to value certainty and continuity over changes.

In addition, Japanese corporate culture values group success over individual achievement. This is the basis of lean manufacturing’s 5th principle of employees collectively internalizing the lean mindset.

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Forecasting the Future vs Focusing on the Present

Supporters of agile manufacturing and lean manufacturing have a completely different way of seeing the future. In agile manufacturing, the future is something to be explored. Market forecasts must be made, and future customer trends must be predicted.

Your current production strategy must conform to future demands and your competitors’ products. Hence, it’s normal to produce goods in substantial quantities to anticipate market demands and equipped with extensive high-end features that customers might not even need at the moment.

Conversely, the future is something not to be worried about in lean manufacturing. Manufacturers only need to focus on existing product orders and nothing more. Additionally, your product’s quality and features should fulfill customers’ expectations, and that’s it. There is no need to go above and beyond.

Lean manufacturing also discourages making future forecasts, as there are always possibilities for errors. Producing goods without a customer order is seen as a waste of resources, as these products will have to sit idle waiting to be bought by customers – costing manufacturers storage space.

Agile Manufacturing and Lean Manufacturing Similarity: Continous Improvement

Besides these differences, agile manufacturing and lean manufacturing share similarities. After all, both philosophies have the same goal: to improve production efficiency.

Both agile manufacturing and lean manufacturing advocate for continuous improvement. In agile manufacturing, continuous improvement is because market demands are constantly evolving. Hence, the continuous improvement of your products is crucial in meeting market demands.

Lean manufacturing, through its kaizen principle, also advocates for continuous improvement, although for a different purpose. The ” lean ” concept must be continuously internalized and strengthened in your employees’ mindset. With it, detecting and removing the 8 waste types will be second nature for your employees.

Agile Manufacturing Solutions

To become an agile manufacturer, you will need the right tools. Azumuta offers the most comprehensive agile manufacturing solutions in the market.

Fully embracing the spirit of agile in manufacturing, Azumuta’s products come in modules. These modules can be used independently, although we recommend combining them to experience the full force of Azumuta’s agile manufacturing solutions.

Here are Azumuta’s manufacturing-enhancing modules:

Digital Work Instructions

In agile manufacturing, you must be as flexible as possible. This means that your shop floor workers must be able to change product specifications or even manufacture new products on short notice. And there’s no better way to help your shop floor workers adapt than with our Digital Work Instructions module.

As a manager, you can create easily understood work instructions in minutes – thanks to our drag-and-drop feature. You can also include visual elements such as images, videos, visual pointers, and many more. You can even load 3D models there, which is necessary when designing a new product.

A digital screen displaying assembly instructions. Icons and descriptions for materials like warning signs, gloves, cleaning product, lubricant spray, scanner, and lubricant filler show details such as quantities, part numbers, and safety precautions.

You can give clear-cut instructions to your shop floor workers, and the communications also work both ways. Our module allows shop floor workers to send messages – supported with images, to other users. This means that any issue can be immediately detected and dealt with.

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Audits & Digital Checklists

Agile manufacturing practitioners believe in a bottom-up approach, granting shop floor workers flexibility to develop and modify new products. But as a manager, you still need accountability towards your shop floor workers. That’s where our Audits & Digital Checklists module comes in.

With our user-friendly digital checklists, you can organize regular audits for your team. Our module is already included with existing audit templates, so you only need to input values on the available fields – saving you from the time-consuming task of drafting them yourself.

A digital report for weekly maintenance tasks is displayed on a computer screen, highlighting the status of various checks. Tasks listed include checks on vehicles, condensers, lubrication systems, and exhausts. Green checkmarks indicate completion; red 'X' marks indicate pending tasks.

Your shop floor workers can also include images and videos when participating in audits – giving you extra accountability. Amazingly, you can send automated reminder notifications to your shop floor workers’ devices to ensure no audits or any of its steps are missed.

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Quality Management

In agile manufacturing, being able to increase or decrease production output rapidly and without disrupting any ongoing production process – is a must. Yet, how is that even possible? With the Quality Management module, that is indeed possible.

This module provides you with a wide-reaching data visualization dashboard. Therefore, you will have a bird’s eye view of every ongoing production process in your plant. With it, you can detect and mitigate any possible disruptions in real-time.

A computer screen displays a dashboard with two widgets. The left widget is a stacked bar graph showing overstock tickets product audits over time, and the right widget is a speedometer-style gauge indicating a value of 352.

In addition, you can detect and pinpoint issues and defects on the assembly line in real-time with this module, as it can be connected to peripheral devices. It also comes with an issue ticketing system, which means that keeping track and resolving issues is an easy task.

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Skill Matrix & Training

And, of course, all agile manufacturers must continuously improve themselves. This means producing more goods with lower costs and in a shorter time. This can only be achieved by using the most advanced production machinery and applying the latest manufacturing techniques.

This means that your employees will always need to stay updated with the latest industrial know-how. And there’s no easier way of doing that than using our Skill Matrix & Training module.

With our module, you can create visually intuitive skill matrices in just a few minutes – thanks to our pre-existing templates. Thanks to it, you can constantly keep track of your employees’ skill levels.

A Skill Matrix chart showcases the proficiency levels of Warehouse Employees in different skills such as Corrective Actions, Work Instructions, 5S, ERP Software, Forklift Driving, Inventory Management Software, and Knowledge/CPM Employees. Colored blocks denote skill levels.

Are you planning to upgrade your employees’ skills through training? Our module can also help with that. You can draft short and long-term employee training programs in our module. When training is due, It will send automated reminder notifications to your employees’ devices.

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Free Lean Manufacturing E-Book

Besides the tools above, we also provide a lean manufacturing e-book that you can download for free.

See how Azumuta’s powerful modules have helped a client to have a 100% paperless shop floor, 100%, 60% reduction in data entry time, 35% reduction in documentation time, and achieved 0% operator idle time.

Not yet convinced? Check out countless other customer success stories. Look no further, Azumuta has the most complete lean manufacturing software tools available in the market.

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