Lean processes focus on reducing waste to increase profits and customer satisfaction. The primary goals of lean are to reduce costs by eliminating any activities that do not add value for the customer, such as excess processing, overproduction, or unnecessary movement. By reducing costs through eliminating waste, businesses can lower prices to keep customers happy while growing market share and profits. True lean processes require continuous improvement and putting the customer's needs first.

1. THE QUICK-START
SME GUIDE TO LEAN PROCESSES

2. 2
WHAT IS LEAN?
Simply put, lean is a set of continually improving
processes that help you to remain profitable in a
customer-driven world.
Lean is about producing the right product at the
right time in the right quantity and at the right
price for the customer.

3. 3
WHY IS LEAN
IMPORTANT?
Once upon a time, businesses decided on prices by
working out their cost and adding on their profit margin.
Nowadays, the market drives the price for many products
and services. What’s more, customers are always looking
for a discount. Making a profit, therefore, isn’t as simple as
it once was.
Lean systems allow you to compete without sacrificing
profitability.

4. WHAT ARE THE
GOALS OF LEAN?
The primary goal of lean is to reduce waste throughout a
business, thereby reducing costs.
By reducing costs, you can lower your prices and keep
your customers happy.
By keeping customers happy, you can increase your
market share and grow your business.
With lean, everybody is happy.

5. 5
WHAT IS WASTE?
Lean’s main goal is to reduce waste – but what exactly is waste?
Waste is simply any extra time, labour or
material spent producing a product or service
that doesn’t add value for the customer.

6. 6
3 COMMON TYPES OF
WASTE
● Extra Processing: Extra
work performed on a
product beyond the
standard required by the
customer.
● Overproduction: Producing
greater quantities than
customers demand
● Movement: Any
unnecessary movement
of materials, parts,
equipment, information
or people between
processes
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7. HOW TO IDENTIFY
WASTE
Lean looks at all kinds of waste throughout your
whole business.
It's therefore essential that you look at all your
processes – no matter how small – and identify any
and all waste.

8. IDENTIFYING YOUR
VALUE STREAM
● An easy way to identify waste is to identify your value stream.
● A value stream pulls together all of the materials, people,
information, and activities that must come together to provide
your customer with the value they want.
● Anything that is superfluous to that value stream (i.e. any activity
or process that isn’t integral to providing the customer with value)
you can label as waste.

9. WHAT DOES A LEAN
BUSINESS LOOK LIKE?
Lean businesses:
● Are customer-centric
● Continually challenge the status quo
● Know that there’s always room for improvement
● Understand that the customers’ wants and needs are everchanging
● Find lessons in every failure

10. THE BENEFITS OF LEAN
The most obvious benefit is that it ensures your customers are happy.
It's also proven to significantly increase profits.
● Studies have shown that lean SMEs start to outperform their
non-lean counterparts just 2 years after adopting lean
● After 3 years, lean SMEs see EBITDA margin improvements of 11%,
and after 7 years that rises to more than 50%

11. KEY THINGS TO
REMEMBER ABOUT LEAN
● Lean is about continuous improvement – to be truly lean, you must
be committed to constant self-evaluation
● Lean is customer-centric – while EBITDA margin is improved, it’s all
about delivering value to the customer
● Lean takes time – but in the long run it’s extremely profitable

12. ADD VALUE AND REDUCE
WASTE WITH THE RIGHT
EQUIPMENT
Learn how leasing will help your business:
Sharon Price, Sales Director, 01827 300 339
www.shireleasing.co.uk

13. Shire Leasing PLC, 1 Calico Business Park, Sandy Way, Amington, Tamworth, Staffordshire B77 4BF
t: 01827 68939 | f: 01827 68672 | email: info@shireleasing.co.uk | web: www.shireleasing.co.uk