Lean Management - Guiding Principles

To be more competitive in today's business environment it is essential that a company adopts Lean practices. The 2 major guiding principles are:

1) Only provide services / products that the customer wants.
2) Relentless pursuit in the identification and elimination of waste.

Only provide services / products that the customer wants
On the surface this appears obvious. However, it is essential that a company interviews the customer and understands their needs. There is great temptation to include processes or services that the provider believes are necessary but that the customer does not value. Always ask the customer what they are willing to pay for. If they aren't willing to pay for it then it is not valuable to them.

Relentless pursuit in the identification and elimination of waste
Your management team or departmental team must always be seeking ways to identify waste and then determine how to eliminate or reduce the waste produced. Traditional brainstorming techniques are one of the most common tools to identify waste. Another technique that the author uses is to have everyone write down 5 items that cause waste within the organization. As the people share their responses they are recorded on a flipchart. This last process can be used in multiple meetings by changing the nature of the question. Instead of asking "what causes waste?" use any of the following: "what steps or tasks are redundant?", "what processes are unnecessary?", "where are too many approvals required?"

© 2010 - Jim Lindell