Overview of what Lean management means to organizations in terms of culture change, process improvement and the importance of educating your workforce about Lean Enterprise concepts.

1. What is Lean?
Simply put, Lean is a total change in the
culture of any organization. The new culture
creates processes that are free of waste and
deliver value to the end customer at lower
costs, higher quality, and on time, based on
the expectations of the customer.

2. What is Lean?
Some facts:
• Lean has very little to do with the product or
service that your organization produces.
• Lean can not be successfully planned and
implemented unless everyone in the
organization has detailed knowledge of Lean.
• Lean can not be implemented by a few.
Everyone in the organization must be
involved.

3. What is Lean?
Facts:
• Lean as a program to eliminate people is
doomed to fail.
• Suppliers and customers must participate in
the implementation of Lean.
• Lean is never fully implemented. Lean is a
continuous process improvement program
that demands periodic reviews of processes
that have been changed.

4. What is Lean?
Facts:
• Lean is about creating processes that have
predictable and reliable results.
• The focus of process change is to create a
process that meets the value expectations of
the downstream customer.
• More than 50% of the time and money spent
on existing non-lean processes is wasted!

5. What is Lean?
What you may have heard about Lean:
“We don’t have the money or resources to
attempt a lean implementation.”
Response: If 50% of what you do today is
wasteful and does not add value to the end
customer, surely you can afford to do things
differently.

6. What is Lean?
“Oh, we tried Lean and it did not work”
Response:
If your organization failed to educate everyone on the
elements, rules, and tools of Lean, you were destined for
failure.
If your organization failed to produce a strategic plan for a
lean implementation, you were destined for failure.
If management was not committed to a culture change
and did not participate in and support the Lean effort,
you were destined for failure.

7. What is Lean?
“Lean does not apply to my industry”
Response:
Lean works everywhere. Lean started in the
automotive industry but has moved on to
healthcare, service businesses, and government.
Again, Lean is about processes not products or
services.

8. What is Lean?
“My organization is not large enough to receive
any benefits from Lean education.”
Response:
No organization is too small to receive benefits
from Lean education. There is no business that
is void of processes. If just one of those
processes is broken, you can receive a benefit
from it being fixed.

9. What is Lean?
Elements of Lean:
Value
Value Stream
Flow
Pull
Perfection

10. Value
What is value?
Value is what the downstream or end customer is
asking or paying you to provide. Value is always
defined by the downstream or end customer.
Rule of thumb:
If your processes include steps that your customers
would not be willing to pay for, you should make
every attempt to eliminate those process steps.

11. Value Stream
The value stream is represented by everything
that your organization does to deliver a product
or service to your end customer.
Rule of thumb:
A successful and sustainable lean program must
examine every process in the value stream.

12. Flow
Flow relates to processes that move products or
services through a value stream at a pace that
meets the end customer’s expectation of a timely
delivery.
Rule of thumb:
Flow is always determined using the customer’s
expectation. Government organizations usually run
counter to this concept and dictate delivery times
to their end customers. This can change!

13. Pull
Pull relates to processes that start building a
product or providing a service once an order for
that product or service is received. This is the
reverse of processes that operate on a PUSH
basis that simply builds products and then waits
for an order.

14. Perfection
A Lean organization seeks perfection in
everything that it does.
Every process in a Lean organization is free of
waste and delivers quality results at less cost,
and delivers the products or services in a timely
fashion.

15. Culture Change
If the current culture of your organization has
created processes that are wasteful and fail to
deliver products and services on time at a
competitive price and of high quality, changes must
be made.
Lean forces a culture change. Lean accomplishes
culture change in a controlled environment. The
key component of culture change is EDUCATION.

16. Education
Any culture that was developed and sustained itself
did so by educating everyone as to the basic
concepts and beliefs of that culture.
Rule of thumb:
If every executive in your organization is not
educated relative to the elements, rules and tools
associated with a Lean implementation, you will fail
in the implementation of that program.

17. Education
Rule of thumb:
If every worker in the organization does not
receive a comprehensive education in the
elements, rules and tools of a lean program,
you will fail.
If everyone in your organization fails to
participate in a lean implementation,
you will fail.

18. Kaizen
Once everyone in your organization has received a
comprehensive Lean education, you are ready to
begin a Lean implementation.
• “Kaizen” is a team event that deals with every
aspect of change within your organization.
• Kaizen teams are used to identify value as
perceived by the downstream or end customer.
• Kaizen teams are used to depict the value stream
of every product or service offered by your
organization.

19. Kaizen
• Kaizen teams are used to analyze and fix every
process in the many value streams that exist in
your organization.
• Traditionally, Kaizen teams are small (6 to 8
workers) who have a short period of time to
analyze and fix a process (one to two weeks is
ideal).

20. Kaizen
• Kaizen teams are made up of workers from
your organization as well as supplier and
customer organizations.
• No more than 2 of the team members should
have working knowledge of or work within the
process being examined.
• Function over form is the rule for a Kaizen
event. It does not have to look pretty and any
time spent on making it pretty is wasted.

21. Kaizen
• Every process should be revisited by a Kaizen
team one year after a Kaizen event. As
workers become more familiar with Lean they
will make changes to processes as they are
needed, using Kaizen methods and Lean rules
and tools.

22. Benefits
What can You expect to gain from a successful
and sustainable Lean implementation?
• A complete overhaul of your organization’s
culture.
• Processes that are free of waste and deliver
products and services that are of high quality,
less costly, and delivered on time based on the
expectations of your downstream and end
customers.

23. Benefits
• Products that have been engineered to work
once produced and are designed to be built
with the least amount of effort and cost.
• Production and office facilities that are
designed to produce products and services
safely with the least amount of movement.
• Processes that have quality built in as opposed
to those that have quality checked at the end
of the process.

24. Benefits
• Employees that are lean thinkers and who can
adapt to change.
• Drastically improved margins.
• Reduced Lead Times.
• Reduced scrap costs (in manufacturing).
• Reduced inventories.
• Reduced capital equipment costs.
• Less costly rework.

25. Benefits
• Processes that can meet budgeted operating
costs.
• Maintenance programs that extend the useful
life of assets.
• Suppliers who can react to fluctuations in
volume.
• Satisfied customers.
• Growth.