What Lean Means
Lean as a way of delivering value to the customer with less waste, and what it is not.
8 min
Activities: 0 of 2
Every organisation turns work into something a customer needs. A plant makes pumps. A logistics company moves parcels. A finance team pays suppliers. In each case some of the effort creates something the customer wants, and some of it does not. Parts wait in a corner. A form is checked three times. A technician walks across the site to find a tool.
Lean is a way of thinking and working that looks at the whole process through the customer's eyes. It asks two questions again and again: what does the customer really value? and what in our process does not add to that value? Then it removes the second, step by step, with the people who do the work.
The aim is not to make people work faster or harder. The aim is to make the work flow smoothly, with fewer delays, fewer mistakes and less effort wasted, so the same people can deliver more value with less stress.
What Lean is and what it is not
- A focus on value as the customer sees it.
- A habit of seeing and removing waste.
- Making work flow, so items do not stop and wait.
- Small improvements made every day by the team.
- Respect for the people who do the work.
About this course
This is a beginner course. It gives you the vocabulary and the main ideas of Lean, so you can take part in improvement work and read the more detailed Lean courses with confidence. It is awareness training. It does not award a certificate of competence, a "belt" or any licence. You will meet belt names such as Yellow Belt and Green Belt in many companies; no single body owns those names, and each organisation or training provider sets its own meaning for them.
First impressions
Your manager at Brenlow Engineering announces that the drawing office will "go Lean" next month. A colleague says: "That means they will cut staff and make us work faster." How do you answer, based on what Lean really is?
Which statement best describes the purpose of Lean?