How does Lean Manufacturing relate to safety and OSHAs VPP program?
Modeled after the Toyota Production Systems, Lean Manufacturing is an approach/philosophy to reduce process cycle time by the elimination of waste. Lean practitioners seek to minimize waste by removing non-value-added activities such as wasted motion, inspections, and rework, while making the most efficient use of resources. Stated another way, Lean promotes an employee culture intended to eliminate waste, facilitate change, and foster continuous improvement. VPP Star sites often speak of the development of an employee “Safety Culture” as central to their success in eliminating work-related safety and health incidents. Responding to accidents creates a series of non-value-added activities, consumes scarce resources, negatively impacts production, decreases efficiency, and costs money (directly and indirectly). The basic tenants shared by Lean organizations and VPP Star sites include detecting and preventing problems before they occur, performing root cause analysis of problems, assigni
