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Whether you sell a product or a service, you want your customer to recognize it for what it is really: a value worth the investment. This proposed value is always the result of a process on your side, as a manufacturer or provider. As a flow of actions, any of your processes, whether product manufacturing or service delivery, can be improved dramatically. Thus, industrial organizations started developing new methods to improve production processes. These initiatives were then conceptualized and formalized as Lean Thinking.
The concepts behind Lean Thinking are not new and, against common belief, not coming from Japan at the 20th century. As shown by the few examples below, the attempt to achieve the perfect process is in fact a long quest:
the Venetian navy understood benefits of standardized parts in the 15th century; -
France enacted an ordinance in the 18th century that required metal parts to be standardized; -
the American army has standardization operational for the Civil War in the 19th century; -
Henry Ford introduced flow production and standardization in the beginning of the 20th century; -
Quality measurement and standardization were pushed further and formalized by Kiichiro Toyota from 1930 to 1950.
The study of the Toyota Production System (TPS)
captured in the book The Machine That Changed The World the lean initiative started by the Japanese car manufacturer after World War II.
In the 20th century, industrial organizations started developing new methods to improve production processes. These initiatives were captured in 1990 by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the book The Machine That Changed The World. This work is at the source of the concept of Lean Thinking.
From Production to Lean Production
Lean thinking proposes a set of methods that remove steps within the production process that do not create value and streamline actions that do create value in a continuous flow. As the concept behind these methods, Lean thinking focuses on the production flow as a value stream toward your end customers, and thus, its principles aim at maximizing value while minimizing waste.
The 5 Principles of Lean Thinking:
Specify value from the standpoint of your customer -
Identify the value stream for each product or service Make the value flow toward your customer as quickly
as possible by both: Enable your customer to pull what they need Aim at perfection (zero waste) by continuous improvement (kaizen)
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From Lean Production to Lean Solutions
Lean Thinking introduces the world to the principles of Lean Production used to eliminate waste during the production process. Now, Leans Solutions delineate the principles of Lean Consumption that eliminate inefficiency from the consumption process. Furthermore, Lean applied to the enterprise as a systemic model created the Lean Enterprise Model (LEM).
The Lean Enterprise Model (LEM) is the application of the concept of lean thinking at the enterprise level. LEM is set of lean principles and lean practices aiming at promoting lean thinking all over the enterprise, and identifying, as part of the ongoing improvement process (kaizen), areas in which future efforts have to be performed to achieve a better leanness.
The Lean Enterprise Model (LEM) Principles:
- Responsiveness to change
- Waste minimization
- Right thing at the right place, right time, and in the right quantity
- Effective relationships within the value stream
- Continuous improvement (kaizen)
- Optimal first delivered unit quality
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The Lean Enterprise Model (LEM) Practices:
- Identify and optimize enterprise flow
- Assure seamless information flow
- Optimize capability and utilization of people
- Make decisions at lowest possible level
- Implement integrated product and process development
- Develop relationships based on mutual trust and commitment
- Continuously focus on the customer
- Promote lean leadership at all levels
- Maintain challenge of existing processes
- Nurture a learning environment
- Ensure process capability and maturation
- Maximize stability in a changing environment
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More information about the
Lean Enterprise Model (LEM) is
available from the
Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) web site.
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James P. Womack is the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI).
Womack received a BA in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970, an MSc in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975, and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982 for a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the US, Germany, and Japan. During the period 1975–1991, Womack was a full-time research scientist at MIT, directing a series of comparative studies of world manufacturing practices.
Womack is the co-author, with Daniel T. Jones, of the influential best-selling management books The Machine That Changed the World and Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Organization, which describe the principles and practice of lean thinking in production. |
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Daniel T. Jones is the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy (LEA).
Jones was the European director of MIT's Future of the Automobile and International Motor Vehicle programs, and a professor of manufacturing management and founder of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University Business School (Wales).
Jones was a member of the UK government's Rethinking Construction, Manufacturing Futures, Automotive Innovation, and Growth and Skills for Sustainable Communities task forces. He helped establish the first company university in the UK at Unipart and the International Car Distribution Program (ICDP).
Jones is an advisor to the grocery industry's Efficient Consumer Response (ECR Europe) movement. |
Lean Thinking is a concept grown out of mass production. Although only one firm -Toyota with its Toyota Production System (TPS)
- has truly implemented lean thinking all over the organization by even involving its suppliers, many companies have already applied lean thinking to some parts of their processes. The interest from the manufacturing industry in lean thinking is still growing and is strongly sustained by a steadily-growing community of lean evangelists.
Furthermore, not limiting lean thinking to manufacturing, the lean community thus aims at promoting and disseminating lean thinking to other departments (engineering, administration, finance, marketing) or different activity areas like services, which represent nowadays the vast majority of businesses. Beyond the mere factory, lean thinking will be beneficial for any organization world wide.
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CART 
The Machine That Changed the World
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together
The Machine That Changed the World
Learning to See