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Today’s businesses face unprecedented challenges. In addition to meeting the rising demands of consumers, the specialized requirements of complex products, and a lingering public health crisis, there are ongoing strains placed on the supply chain. To respond to these challenges, companies are looking for ways to leverage various solutions along the supply chain to drive automation, collect data, reduce costs, and create efficiencies.

The Real Meaning of “Future” - One thing that everyone hates to admit about “future articles” is that the reality of what they talk about is already here. The rest of us are behind the curve trying to catch up!  While we are assigning these innovations to the “future” - perhaps to give us more time to budget for them – it certainly doesn’t hurt to invest our time into learning our options and planning ahead for the opportunity to take the leap with something new.

While it’s important for lean consultants to stay on top of current trends in lean manufacturing, it is difficult to keep up with advances in technology and new opportunities. For instance there is new warehouse cart technology available that reduces waste. Here are five new trends in lean manufacturing we believe you will want to know about:

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1. Strength-Based Lean Thinking

Most applications of lean thinking begin with an assumption that there is a theoretical “perfect state” for each organizational process and that the current state deviates from the perfect state due to inefficiencies and waste.

The strength-based approach to lean has a different focus. Instead of focusing on what is not working and inefficient, it teaches how to identify what is already working efficiently and generates value in existing processes and systems (this is called “strength focus”).

The strength-based approach to lean is more natural to work with and more sustainable in the long term.

Leveraging current or past knowledge, and accessing experiences and successes from within the system, are great resources for the next generation of improvement initiatives. They also provide motivation for everyone to face the challenges and opportunities ahead.