What is Lean?
A definition of Lean
Lean is gaining popularity over decades because it offers “more for less” – meaning more for your end users and less cost to you, in terms of money, time and effort.
That’s because Lean is defined as a system where you concentrate on maximizing value to end users and cutting out waste activities – costs, time and effort – in a professional and disciplined way.
A Lean approach means understanding what’s really going on in your workplace (the Gemba), to see where value is created and then removing any activities that do not add value for end users.
And that is markedly different from standard quality systems where the emphasis is on making processes more effective and efficient.
But it all started with Jidoka…
What is Jidoka?
Jidoka is one of the most important Lean methods for ensuring problems – waste – never pass to the next step in a process.
Initially, Jidoka applied to solving mechanical problems at Toyota. But its success led to applying Jidoka to the workforce: managers insist that a team member stops a process if they discover a problem.
The rest of the team then comes together to share skills, knowledge and understanding to solve problems. The beneficial side effects are the multi-skilling of the workforce and continually improving workplace processes.
That leads to the “Toyota House of Quality“…
What is the Toyota House of Quality?
Moving forward from Jidoka, where team members support each other to resolve problems, the question was asked again and again: “What are the fundamental elements to get people thinking and working together effectively?“
Toyota used the Jidoka theme to answer this question by a simple system that has the two pillars of Lean quality:
Respect for people – the principle that every team member should be actively engaged in their own development as well as the design and running of their own workplace. The belief in teamwork and respect using Kaizen (small-step improvement) is key to making Lean work.
Continual Improvement – once respect is established, team members feel able to contribute to Kaizen – improvement in the workplace processes by relentless focus on reducing and removing waste activities, understanding the current situation in your workplace and using disciplined steps to achieve the future objectives.
So now you can:
As an individual – introduce and use simple Lean techniques like the Waste Walk to record and then act on any waste activity that you see. This way can lead to a wider realization in your organization that Lean is the way to go.
As an organization – you can design the overall structure of a Lean organization that allows everyone to contribute to the creation of a streamlined, efficient Lean system. Don’t worry – you will almost certainly not be starting from scratch: you will already have elements of a Lean system in place.