Becoming Lean

then help the questioner to see what is actually being done. The difference between the question and the answer is the gap that needs to be bridged

Much of people’s time in business is spent handling the ‘day job’, doing what needs to be done. Lean techniques ask the question “What are we trying to achieve here?” and

are designed to help a business and its people to:
Look.
See.
Understand.
Do

d Total Productive Management. These tools and techniques are well-known and available to all, but not everyone is able and ready for the hard work required to use them well, in a strategic context

The tools of Lean range from the very simple, such as Check Sheets and Run Charts, to the very sophisticated such as Six Sigma and Total Productive Management.

Effort refers to the amount of work that you have to do to get a job done. Lean focuses on finding ways to reduce the Effort required to get work done, to enable you to do more value added activities

Your business exists to make money. So use Money as a key principle to help your people ‘see’ wastes and to put a value on issues, problems and delays

Time is easy to measure and is understood by everyone. It can play a very useful role as a guiding principle for Lean implementation

The three key Lean Principles are:
Time.
Money.
Effort

Lean does this by focusing on finding and removing waste. Nobody wants to do wasteful things, or spend their day doing no-value work. The Lean approach provides people with the tools to help them and their companies to find hidden wastes and to tackle them