Lean is a way of working that delivers more value to customers with less waste. It grew from the Toyota Production System and applies to factories, offices, hospitals and government services alike.
The five principles
- Value: define what the customer is willing to pay for.
- Value stream: map every step that delivers that value and remove those that do not.
- Flow: make the remaining steps flow without interruptions, batches and waiting.
- Pull: produce only what the next step or customer needs, when it is needed.
- Perfection: improve continuously; there is always more waste to remove.
The eight wastes
- Defects
- Overproduction
- Waiting
- Non-utilized talent
- Transportation
- Inventory
- Motion
- Extra processing
Where to start
Walk the process with the team, map the value stream, measure lead time against value-added time, and attack the biggest waste first with 5S, standard work and Kaizen.
