Lean - Business Improvement
What is Lean?
The core operating idea of Lean is to maximize customer value (customers can be internal or external) while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it.
However, Lean is more than just a series of waste reduction tools and buzzwords such as Muda, Kaizen, 5S and Value Stream Mapping, it is a way of thinking and behaving in an organisation; a key area often not considered by the leadership of organisations who implement Lean and often the reason for it not to sustain.
Lean is a journey and a mindset, an environment where change is not only accepted but invented, a culture to support the tools it offers.
At Cre8ive Wisdom we understand the pressure of achieving benefits in the short term, but also have the tools and knowledge to help your organisation sustain the change.
Lean for Production and Services
A popular misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.
Businesses in all industries and services, including healthcare and governments, are using lean principles as the way they think and do. Many organizations choose not to use the word lean, but to label what they do as their own system, such as the Toyota Production System or the Danaher Business System. Why? To drive home the point that lean is not a program or short term cost reduction program, but the way the company operates. The word transformation or lean transformation is often used to characterize a company moving from an old way of thinking to lean thinking. It requires a complete transformation on how a company conducts business. This takes a long-term perspective and perseverance.
The term 'lean' was coined to describe Toyota's business during the late 1980s by a research team headed by Jim Womack, Ph.D., at MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program
The five-step thought process for guiding the implementation of lean techniques is easy to remember, but not always easy to achieve:
1. Specify what creates value from the customers perspective
2. Identify all steps across the whole value stream
3. Make those actions that create value flow
4. Only make what is pulled by the customer just-in-time
5. Strive for perfection by continually removing successive layers of waste
To speak to our Lean expert, Jeff Watson, call us now or drop Jeff an email.
