- Lean management has become a universal management tool for delivering value and optimizing work processes.
- Lean management is an approach to running an organization that supports the concept of continuous improvement. It is a continuous effort to improve products, services or processes that require an “incremental” improvement over time to improve efficiency and quality.
- Lean management uses methods to eliminate factors that waste time, effort or money. This is achieved by analyzing a business process and then reviewing it or by removing steps that do not create value for customers.
Lean management principles
Lean management principles are derived from the Japanese manufacturing industry and include:
- Definition of value from the end customer’s point of view.
- Identify each step in a business process and eliminate those steps that create no value.
- Making the value-forming steps is done in a strict order.
- Repeat the first three steps on a continuous basis until all waste has been removed.
These lean principles ensure that the processes that bring a product to market remain cost effective from start to finish.
Lean production or lean manufacturing is a systematic method for eliminating waste within a production process. This can include waste created by inequality in workloads, overloading and work that adds no value. From the point of view of the customer who uses a service or product, “value” is a process or action for which a customer is willing to pay.
