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Lean: How to implement?
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Lean: How to implement?

This ques­tion is asked by entre­pre­neurs of the indus­tri­al sec­tor involved in the pro­duc­tion of mate­r­i­al goods; how­ev­er, the answer to this ques­tion will also be use­ful to cus­tomer ser­vice sec­tor, IT, and social projects.

Lean Man­age­ment (also called ​“lean man­u­fac­tur­ing”), as well as Kaizen phi­los­o­phy and oth­er man­age­ment tools that can be applied in every busi­ness and process. Say­ing ​“every” before ​“busi­ness and process” is not an exag­ger­a­tion because you can opti­mize every­thing. It is a way of think­ing and pro­duc­tive action and not just a tac­tic based on a cou­ple of algorithms.

Lean pro­duc­tion is

There is an abun­dance of syn­onyms: Lean man­u­fac­tur­ing, lean man­age­ment, lean think­ing … even lean trans­for­ma­tion. Think­ing and trans­for­ma­tion (the word ​“trans­for­ma­tion” itself can be used as a syn­onym for the lean method­ol­o­gy) as a phi­los­o­phy and the­o­ry of doing busi­ness, pro­duc­tion and man­age­ment — as a practice.

The words also reflect the idea of just-in-time pro­duc­tion, intro­duced into the Toy­ota as the first ever sam­ple of the lean method and the con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the con­vey­or pro­duc­tion of cars. Tiffany Ono is a lean prin­ci­ples the devel­op­ment engi­neer after the Sec­ond World War.

Its pos­tu­lates:

  • Waste elim­i­na­tion,
  • Enhanc­ing work­ers’ rights and capabilities,
  • Stocks decrease,
  • Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty increase.

While Hen­ry Ford sup­port­ed resources for the ​“ahead of the demand approach on his pro­duc­tion line, Toy­ota worked on build­ing part­ner­ships with sup­pli­ers and in fact made cars to order.


Many indus­tri­al start-ups already begin with the trans­for­ma­tion, apply­ing the meth­ods and tools from the start of pro­duc­tion and up to the last stage of cus­tomer sup­port. Many years of busi­ness can also be restruc­tured from the old ​“régime” to a new way of think­ing, although this requires per­sis­tence and patience from man­agers. This path is more prof­itable in the long run.

It’s amaz­ing how the lean man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tem changes the hier­ar­chy in the com­pa­ny struc­ture. Instead of man­agers and staff, a com­mu­ni­ty of mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary employ­ees is formed. All the com­pa­ny’s resources, includ­ing peo­ple, are applied to the fullest: Every­one can offer improve­ment, every­one can test their idea in prac­tice, and every­one is respon­si­ble for the com­plex result. This flex­i­bil­i­ty allows you to make changes instant­ly, and there­fore respond to cus­tomer requests, com­peti­tors’ attacks and mar­ket unrest.

What is Lean management

To put it sim­ply, Lean or lean man­u­fac­tur­ing is a project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy in a com­pa­ny that elim­i­nates all inter­fer­ence with man­u­fac­tur­ing. Time and resource waste neg­a­tive­ly affect the result. If the process can be done faster, bet­ter, and cheap­er — it is worth doing right away.

Work algo­rithms revi­sion con­sti­tutes of two stages:

  1. Analy­sis. In order to under­stand whether the cur­rent order in the com­pa­ny works well, you need to ana­lyze all the process­es and make a dia­gram. Call cen­ter scripts, order accep­tance algo­rithm, logis­tics, work with returns in the online store; tech­ni­cal sup­port scripts, pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions in the bug­track­er, rolling out updates in the gro­cery IT com­pa­ny. Reg­is­ter the whole pro­ce­dure, deter­mine the bad places your­self or apply the pro­grams (any soft­ware for visu­al­iz­ing algo­rithms, bot­tle­necks, resources, and time).
  2. Mak­ing changes. Hav­ing found ​“vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties”: Job coor­di­na­tion prob­lems, lack of resources, or out­dat­ed bureau­crat­ic process­es, sug­gest an alter­na­tive. The alter­na­tive does not have to be an inno­va­tion or include dra­mat­ic changes and the ide­al solu­tion. It can be just a way to do bet­ter. You can go through the options pro­posed by the team; how­ev­er, not only dis­cuss them but imple­ment them in prac­tice. No one knows in advance what will be use­ful in your par­tic­u­lar project. The ben­e­fits and costs of each alter­na­tive are revised based on the results of the prac­tice. The best option is imple­ment­ed for good.
Both stages are recur­ring. Lean manu­fu­ca­tur­ing is nev­er com­plete. It is a con­stant improve­ment of details. Lean does not pro­vide grand inno­va­tions, but it does offer con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in small steps.

For the CEO

The main task of the man­ag­er is the prof­itabil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny. One way to achieve it will be to solve prob­lems and reduce pro­duc­tion costs, and anoth­er one — will be to focus on cre­at­ing ​“val­ue” for the client in a prod­uct or ser­vice. The most inter­est­ing thing is that by cor­rect­ly deter­min­ing the val­ue for the client, you can direct the strength of the team and mate­r­i­al resources only to what is impor­tant and reduce the cost of the unimportant.

In oth­er words, Lean helps to save with­out los­ing qual­i­ty and ulti­mate­ly elim­i­nat­ing use­less process­es from the com­pa­ny’s algorithm.

For exam­ple, a client needs a wood­work­ing machine.

  • What is real­ly impor­tant for the buy­er? Price, func­tion­al­i­ty and deliv­ery are impor­tant to all but there are price-ori­ent­ed clients out there (low-cost machine mod­els are cheap­er) and qual­i­ty-ori­ent­ed (machines that allow to make com­plex and exclu­sive projects with thread). They all want to get the machine into the work­shop quick­ly and accurately.
  • What can be opti­mized or improved? Rais­ing qual­i­ty to raise the price is jus­ti­fied. Choos­ing licensed prod­ucts with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in a lan­guage known to the con­sumer, you can con­duct a brief­ing. Pro­vid­ing deliv­ery using a reli­able logis­tics agency, with which the favor­able con­di­tions for coop­er­a­tion had been established.
  • What to remove? Remove all actions that inter­fere with the work. There is a train coach repair plant with geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­trib­uted work­shops. Every day, its man­agers gath­er in the main build­ing for a meet­ing to agree on a list of projects. If you imple­ment a uni­fied case man­age­ment sys­tem, you can get rid of dai­ly time loss from plan­ning meet­ings, which is 7 hours of each shop man­ag­er per week.
  • What needs to be done and in which order to win loy­al clients? From the clients’ per­spec­tive, the pur­chase algo­rithm looks like this: First, accu­rate­ly deter­mine the mod­el of the machine, then the method and address of deliv­ery. It will not make sense to the client to be asked to log in and enter the address before choos­ing a prod­uct. If the request to fill out the address goes after the online con­sul­tant in the pop-up win­dow helped to choose a mod­el, con­fig­u­ra­tion and oth­er nuances — the client then feels trust and is sat­is­fied. Con­sumer val­ue is met, and tasks are per­formed on time. There is also an algo­rithm on the part of the com­pa­ny — you can­not send an order until it is paid. It is hon­est and elim­i­nates the prob­lems with the deceived expec­ta­tions of both parties.
The goal of the direc­tor in Lean method­ol­o­gy is to bring the process of pro­duc­tion, sale, and deliv­ery of goods to the client to its ide­al­ized per­fec­tion. In this case, how­ev­er, the focus is to ben­e­fit the client and not the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny’s prof­it becomes a con­comi­tant suc­cess, thanks to the sav­ing of time and resources in the pro­duc­tion and growth of profits.

For per­son­nel

What is the basis of lean pro­duc­tion for employ­ees of a plant or IT sup­port cen­ter of a com­pa­ny? Prop­er­ly applied method­ol­o­gy saves raw mate­ri­als, improves work­ing con­di­tions, and helps work­ers earn more.

Lean should also be prop­er­ly imple­ment­ed into the com­pa­ny. If you use the method with­out giv­ing it too much thought, the per­son in charge can:

  1. buy low-qual­i­ty com­po­nents in order to save
  2. rearrange the equip­ment in the work­shop to reduce the dis­tance between the con­vey­ors but for­get about the length of the pow­er sup­ply cables 
  3. reg­is­ter a cal­en­dar of exper­i­ments and pro­hib­it unplanned creativity
  4. to launch penal­ties for work­ing tools brak­age but not check their qual­i­ty and condition
  5. Add your version.


The Lean method­ol­o­gy wel­comes con­stant ideas exchange among the employees.


If the method­ol­o­gy is adopt­ed in a team, then any plant work­er can offer the direc­tor their idea of improv­ing the work­flow. The rea­son behind that is because an employ­ee who direct­ly per­forms the work process sees much bet­ter where and what can be improved in this process. With the con­stant intro­duc­tion of such pro­pos­als, the plant cer­tain­ly increas­es its efficiency.

At the same time, the work­er will be reward­ed if the idea turns out to be use­ful. He or she will receive a blank check on the imple­men­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal tests of the ideas. Only through tri­al and error can you find the right path and lean man­u­fac­tur­ing rec­om­mends try­ing and improv­ing constantly.

For exam­ple, a con­ve­nient mobile orga­niz­er will reduce the num­ber of missed dead­lines and increase the speed of the mar­ket­ing and design depart­ments table. Imple­ment­ing it in a com­pa­ny will be time-sav­ing, which means it will be the basis of lean manufacturing.


For the company

Both the head of the com­pa­ny and the ordi­nary execu­tor project cre­ate the val­ue of the prod­uct for the client with their actions. And all their efforts are direct­ed at achiev­ing this.

The ben­e­fit for the client aris­es not in cer­tain moments, like choos­ing a prod­uct, accept­ing an order, pack­ing it in a ware­house, or deliv­ery date.

Val­ue is cre­at­ed by a stream of result-ori­ent­ed processes:

  • Online con­sul­tant helps to choose the size, mod­el, and color;
  • Plac­ing an order, you can choose the method of pay­ment via cred­it card or cash to the courier;
  • It includes war­ran­ty, replace­ment or return coupon, gift cards, or invi­ta­tions to a the­mat­ic event;
  • You can set up the date and time of deliv­ery, call the couri­er, or select a spe­cif­ic net­work store for self-pickup.
The non-lin­ear work of the whole com­pa­ny allows to sim­pli­fy the flows, change their algo­rithms so as to gain sav­ings, increase the val­ue at the same cost, or sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the per­cent­age of scrap and returns.

In addi­tion to pure val­ue and the absence of defec­tive copies, cus­tomer cus­tomiza­tion of the prod­uct is impor­tant, espe­cial­ly in the con­sumer seg­ment. If a com­pa­ny can rebuild its con­vey­or belt with­out sig­nif­i­cant loss­es, pro­duce dif­fer­ent or new prod­uct mod­els, then it will def­i­nite­ly win in the com­pe­ti­tion. Even mak­ing pre­fab­ri­cat­ed indi­vid­ual kits from basic parts or pro­vid­ing exclu­sive sets to order is already a tan­gi­ble advan­tage in the market.

Muda, Mura, Muri

This is how you call waste and unnec­es­sary expens­es in the Lean method­ol­o­gy. In oth­er words, any­thing extra that is worth remov­ing. Any­thing that does not add val­ue to the cus­tomer. Muda (waste), Mura (uneven­ness), Muri (over­bur­den) — words from Japan­ese my account cus­tomer that got accus­tomed in Eng­lish busi­ness slang.

Muda- waste, unnec­es­sary expens­es. Man­age­ment mis­takes consequences.





Muda In Indus­try In IT
1. Trans­port Mis­cal­cu­la­tion of logis­tics, unnec­es­sary move­ment of raw mate­ri­als, goods, doc­u­ments or data. Use­less trans­fer of infor­ma­tion between data­bas­es and depart­ments table. Unnec­es­sary tools or con­stant doc­u­ment switching.
2. Inven­to­ry Exces­sive stocks of raw mate­ri­als, semi-fin­ished and fin­ished products.  Projects that are stuck in the ​“under devel­op­ment” stage. Bug­track­er clogged with obso­lete queries. Cumu­la­tive back­log of orders.
3. Move­ment Unnec­es­sary move­ment of peo­ple around the work­shop, offices, between the ware­house and the direc­tor’s office.  Frag­ment­ed data­bas­es, bad search nav­i­ga­tion. Phys­i­cal­ly dis­tant local media. The need to trav­el often to meet­ings. Many tabs in browsers, many mes­sen­gers, or oth­er ways to decen­tral­ize data and communication
4. Expec­ta­tions Sim­ple peo­ple and equip­ment. Wait­ing for instruc­tions, ver­i­fi­ca­tion, access to infor­ma­tion. Lack of tools and equip­ment for the smooth oper­a­tion of staff.  The absence of all the equip­ment for work, espe­cial­ly among soft­ware testers. Prob­lems with access to the data­base, inter­rup­tions of the Inter­net, elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er caus­es of pro­gramr downtime.
5. Exor­bi­tant development  Excess stage in pro­cess­ing, waste of raw After the request ​“a sketch, pre­lim­i­nary data, approx­i­mate indi­ca­tors”, it will be an error to make a com­plete code, in-depth analy­sis or devel­op­ment plan in accor­dance with the growth / decline of indicators
6. Over­pro­duc­tion Unjus­ti­fied pro­duc­tion of the prod­uct pri­or to order­ing or in bulk. The prod­uct is obso­lete before the sale stage.  In the fin­ished project, there is an unso­licit­ed ama­teur, incor­rect bind­ing to the past events or technologies.
7. Defects, waste The prod­uct does not com­ply with stan­dards, order or com­pa­ny regulations. Mis­match of require­ment spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Addi­tion­al iter­a­tions of edits.
8. Poten­tial* Ignor­ing the poten­tial and skills of col­leagues. Unfair exploita­tion of labor, ban­ning the ini­tia­tive of workers.  Lack of career growth. Indif­fer­ence to work­flow opti­miza­tion suggestions.
9. Resources* Lack of eco­nom­ic. Equip­ment, lights and oth­er tech­ni­cal resources should be turned off when work stops for the night, at the end of the production). Log out, turn off the PC before leav­ing. Con­trol the oper­a­tion of air con­di­tion­ing, heat­ing, print­er, ket­tle and microwave (at least).
10. By-prod­ucts* In addi­tion to the final prod­uct, prod­ucts accom­pa­ny­ing the cre­ation process can be pro­duced. Addi­tion­al parts from met­al scraps at the fac­to­ry of pipes, repair ser­vices at the sta­tion for sale of used cars  Cer­tain func­tions of the soft­ware can be an inde­pen­dent prod­uct. Devel­op­ing an appli­ca­tion with the search for the near­est café can lead to two more pos­si­bil­i­ties: Prof­it on adver­tis­ing for restau­rants, prof­it on adver­tis­ing events. 

* Muda that is added in some classifications.

Mura- the rea­son for muda. Uneven­ness and mis­match of work­load, overload.

Mura In Indus­try In IT
Over­load Lack of resources at peak demand, inac­tion in a down­turn. Dur­ing hol­i­day sales, it is worth the tem­po­rary hir­ing addi­tion­al work­ers. At rush hour in the sub­way, there are addi­tion­al trains. Hav­ing won the ten­der, you will fin­ish the old projects in advance so that the capac­i­ty is enough to com­plete the order on time. We have no work for a month, and then we do every­thing with­in a week. This is mean­ing­less stress topped with the dis­crep­an­cy between work­ing con­di­tions and tasks. Plac­ing the announce­ment of the event in social net­works one week before the event is a fail­ure. Mar­ket­ing cam­paign for 3 – 4 months with reg­u­lar posts — success.


The sea­son­al, reg­u­lar, con­trolled by adver­tis­ing, con­sumer demand has its own rhythm, fre­quen­cy (week, month, quar­ter). Ana­lyze the downs and ups in demand as well as prod­ucts that are in demand or unprof­itable Fore­cast, dis­trib­ute the load and task.

Muri­is inap­pro­pri­ate. Undue com­plex­i­ty in the work.


Muri In the industry In IT
Non-core jobs Put the sales man­ag­er to the con­vey­or belt shop. To appoint your third wife as direc­tor of the plant in lieu of a gift. To Per­form tasks that are not rel­e­vant to the posi­tion and devel­oped skills. To send the lay­out design­er to the call center.
Poor­ly staffed work­ing place One set of tools for 4 assemblers. The trainee has a lap­top, but there is no anti-virus pro­gram or oth­er spe­cial­ized pro­grams nec­es­sary for the work. The design­er is in pos­ses­sion of the obso­lete pirat­ed photoshop.
The Fuzzy Instructions Abstract require­ments to the order, pro­vid­ing mea­sure­ments by eye. “Make it that the lay­out has more life in it, and those but­tons should be just wow!”
The lack of tols and equipment One print­er in the Office of the direc­tor, account­ing con­stant­ly runs to print to it.  The pro­gram­mer is hired with his or her own lap­top and is instruct­ed to bring it to the office as there is no option of buy­ing a desk­top com­put­er with all the need­ed software.
The lack of prop­er main­te­nance / unre­li­able equipment The obso­lete con­vey­or belt, ser­vice guar­an­tee that expired half a year ago. Sysad­min does not clas­si­fy and does not sign the cable in the serv­er rack. The time on search­ing for a fault is mul­ti­plied sev­er­al times.
Untrust­ed processes Untest­ed tech­nol­o­gy of pro­cess­ing of raw mate­ri­als, the abstract proven meth­ods of account­ing and ques­tion­able ideas in production. Mon­key test­ing as the sole and suf­fi­cient way of test­ing pro­grams for bugs (errors).
Poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion Poor audi­bil­i­ty in the walkie talkie on the ter­ri­to­ry of the shop. The argu­ment with the direc­tor’s sec­re­tary when it is impor­tant to urgent­ly report on the state of emer­gency. The bureaucracy. 2 mobile num­bers, 8 Instant Mes­sen­gers, 3 Emails and 5 social net­works to get OK to do the job.


The essence of Lean man­u­fac­tur­ing is to elim­i­nate all Muda, Muri, and Mura. Under­stand­ing their causal rela­tion­ship, you can focus on the ori­gins of the prob­lems and avoid fix­ing every small detail afterward.

The advan­tages of the Lean methodology

A skep­tic will say, why do I need Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing when one can sim­ply apply a cou­ple of stan­dard instruc­tions to tack­le any dif­fi­cul­ties that had already been described in state stan­dards’ pro­to­col or reduce wast­ed paper on bureau­cra­cy in the com­pa­ny? The meth­ods of lean pro­duc­tion as a tool are strong but can­not be ful­ly imple­ment­ed with­out the under­stand­ing of the phi­los­o­phy and structure.

It’s sim­i­lar to cram­ming before exams just to pass it and for­get all the knowl­edge right away. After the exam is over, you have noth­ing left in your brain and there is noth­ing to apply in prac­tice. In the same way, when fol­low­ing an instruc­tion to add a cou­ple of algo­rithms that will reduce waste or dead­lines to ful­fill tasks, lean man­u­fac­tur­ing can­not be cre­at­ed. Lean is a per­ma­nent change. Even once-a-year upgrad­ing does not mean intro­duc­ing the methodology.

The whole essence is in the expe­ri­ence, test­ing in prac­tice. Only after per­son­al expe­ri­ence, the­o­ries test­ing, and data col­lec­tion new stages of exper­i­men­ta­tion can be ana­lyzed and devel­oped. Orga­nize such cycle as a rule for cor­rec­tions imple­men­ta­tions, the fight against muda, mura, and muri.

To ini­tial­ly run the project on the method­ol­o­gy of lean, one needs:
  1. Gath­er all the infor­ma­tion about the future task,
  2. Seg­ment it to sub­tasks, devel­op and test them separately,
  3. To cal­cu­late time and bud­get on the basis of the col­lect­ed expe­ri­ence of com­peti­tors or their own past projects (to rely only on real data instead of abstract.

The prin­ci­ples of lean manufacturing

On the basis of muda, mura, and muri there are exact­ly 10 prin­ci­ples of lean manufacturing:
  1. To elim­i­nate waste.
  2. To min­i­mize stocks.
  3. To max­i­mize the flow.
  4. The pro­duc­tion depends on con­sumer demand.
  5. Know the demands of the clients.
  6. To do it right the first time.
  7. To strength­en the abil­i­ty of employees.
  8. To build a sys­tem with easy replace­ment of its components.
  9. To estab­lish part­ner­ships with suppliers.
  10. To cre­ate a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improvement.

Also, there are three basic tasks of busi­ness. They trans­form the entire company:

  • Pur­pose What cus­tomer prob­lems are solved by the com­pa­ny, the ulti­mate val­ue for the consumer?
  • Process. What are the cri­te­ria for the assess­ment of each stream of val­ues? Check­ing the algo­rithms and links of the chain, the fight against waste, inex­pe­di­en­cy, and work over­load. Each step is valu­able, real, afford­able, ade­quate, and flex­i­ble while flows and the impact are uniformly.
  • Peo­ple. How to allo­cate respon­si­bil­i­ty for each process and the flow of pro­duc­tion? Secure the rights not after a posi­tion but after a process that is entrust­ed entire­ly to a par­tic­u­lar per­son? The cura­tor of the tasks forms the cre­ation of val­ue from the point of view of the busi­ness goals and active­ly embod­ies the Lean Transformation.

For indi­vid­ual devel­op­ment in the career, these same basic three objec­tives look the fol­low­ing way:

  • What is the pur­pose of my work? 
  • What is the process to gen­er­ate the best results in the most effi­cient way?
  • Who are the peo­ple for whom I cre­ate value?
The notion of ​“Kaizen” helps find­ing the answers to these questions.


The prin­ci­ples of the Kaizen phi­los­o­phy — con­tin­u­ous improvement

The term kaizen - con­sists of two Japan­ese char­ac­ters カイゼン: Kai — change and Zen — good. Changes for the bet­ter, con­tin­u­ous improve­ment, trans­for­ma­tion for the bet­ter… It is dif­fi­cult to say whether this is the the­o­ret­i­cal teach­ing of philoso­phers or prac­ti­cal man­age­ment method. Kaizen sym­bio­sis of both con­cepts allow­ing the work­ers to offer and then quick­ly test their ideas to improve the work of the enter­prise. Lean transformation/​man­u­fac­tur­ing stems from the prac­ti­cal part of and is based on its philosophy.

Kaizen is based on five pillars:
  1. Equal inter­ac­tion at all lev­els (lead­er­ship, man­agers, and work­ers) and direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion among them.
  2. The indi­vid­ual discipline
  3. A healthy moral state of the team and each individual.
  4. Qual­i­ty circles
  5. Sug­ges­tions for the work­place and con­vey­or from the work­place and con­vey­or belt to the method of com­pa­ny’s work evaluation.
Read more about Kaizen in the next article.

The algo­rithm of lean pro­duc­tion imple­men­ta­tion 

Accord­ing to James Wom­ack, Founder of the Lean Enter­prise Insti­tute and author of sev­er­al books on transformation:

  • Select a leader — respon­si­ble con­duc­tor of change.
  • Obtain knowl­edge about lean and kaizen from a reli­able source.
  • Find or cre­ate a cri­sis — a prob­lem that requires an imme­di­ate action.
  • Exper­i­ment, prac­tice, ana­lyze the results imme­di­ate­ly. Do not get too deep into devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy (it has been con­firmed by the Wright Brothers).
  • To build real and desired maps of val­ue cre­ation flow. They should differ.
  • To ensure the trans­paren­cy of the results for all staff.
  • To reduce the pro­duc­tion cycle (the accel­er­a­tion of the flow).
  • Imple­ment Kaizen and con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op the com­pa­ny (the cre­ation of val­ue in the shops goes to the admin­is­tra­tive change).
Here is what to begin with when it comes to the intro­duc­tion of lean pro­duc­tion. The pos­si­ble tools:
  1. Val­ue Stream Mapping 
  2. Pull pro­duc­tion
  3. Kaizen
  4. The 5C
  5. SMED
  6. Poka Yoke
  7. Total Pro­duc­tive Main­te­nance (TPM)
  8. Just-In-Time (JIT)
  9. Visu­al­iza­tion
  10. The U‑shaped cells


Imple­men­ta­tion exam­ples of lean manufacturing

Com­pet­i­tive­ness of the com­pa­ny often depends on cer­tain cri­te­ria. Fast deliv­ery of tasty piz­zas will win over the most deli­cious piz­za. Cus­tomiza­tion of the vehi­cle at auto deal­er­ship is more appeal­ing than a stan­dard mod­el. Detailed results of the pri­vate clin­ic’s med­ical ana­lyzes is always bet­ter than the min­i­mum of infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the clin­ics on the go.

To pro­vide an advan­tage over com­peti­tors (speed, cus­tomiza­tion, the qual­i­ty of the research) can be done by con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the project man­age­ment sys­tem as done many com­pa­nies in the world.

Lean have been suc­cess­ful­ly implemented:
  • In the Unit­ed States: Toy­ota, Alcoa, Boe­ing, Pel­la, Emer­son Elec­tric, Jacobs Equip­ment Com­pa­ny (Dana­her).
  • In Europe: Motoman Robot­ec, Unior, Iskra Asing, Vol­vo, Met­so, Nuon.
  • In Chi­na: Leno­vo, Suntory.
  • State and munic­i­pal agen­cies of many countries.

Appli­ca­tions and tools of Lean

Imple­ment the trans­for­ma­tion into a mod­ern com­pa­ny is eas­i­er than 30 years ago.There are many sim­i­lar appli­ca­tions for Android and iOS that help lead eco­nom­i­cal and qual­i­ty-ori­ent­ed business.

The tools of lean man­u­fac­tur­ing are used to moti­vate staff, build rela­tion­ships and net­work between the shop and the lead­er­ship, ana­lyze the results of the intro­duc­tion of new ideas and the dis­cov­ery of wastes in the work of the enter­prise. Test­ing and exper­i­ments, devel­op­ing a sys­tem of con­vey­ors or bug­track­ers for pro­gram­mers — all of this is soft for Lean methodology

Work­sec­tion



Work­sec­tion — Saas ser­vice has ful­ly func­tion­al man­age­ment, Gantt and sev­er­al types of reports.

The Gantt chart allows you to track the rela­tion­ship, the chronol­o­gy of tasks, and peo­ple who were assigned as respon­si­ble for them. Records have over­due tasks and exceed­ed bud­gets marked.

In the task sec­tion ​“by peo­ple”, exec­u­tives can see the scope of work for each per­son as well as if there are peo­ple who have been idle. It is so easy to iden­ti­fy improp­er dis­tri­b­u­tion of human resources. This way the fight against muda, mura, and muri becomes clear and simple.


You can cre­ate a sep­a­rate ​“pro­pos­als from the com­mand” project where tasks can be cre­at­ed for all the ideas to be implemented.

You can also set the dead­line for two weeks or a month, test the idea, dis­cuss it in the com­ments of the process, and then ana­lyze the results.If the idea is good — imple­ment it fully.

Ora­cle


Most busi­ness own­ers apply pro­grams like Ora­cle or vir­tu­al ser­vices for project management.

LeanApp


The most famous appli­ca­tion is LeanApp for iOS that allows you to orga­nize and control
all process­es in the company.

The ver­dict

Com­pa­nies imple­ment Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing through­out the world, but not all of them are flour­ish­ing thanks to it. Many peo­ple do not know how, or do not under­stand the phi­los­o­phy, or incor­rect­ly apply pro­vid­ed instructions.

The essence of the methodology:
  1. Elim­i­nat­ing waste,
  2. The empow­er­ment of workers,
  3. Reduc­ing stocks,
  4. Increas­ing productivity.
The way is always indi­vid­ual, and it depends on many fac­tors, such as the indus­try and mar­ket seg­ment, tar­get audi­ence, prod­uct or ser­vice itself, pri­or­i­ty, and com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­ence of the company.

Begin­ning the fight with waste in most ​“nar­row” places of work flow where the error is critical.
Find­ing the cri­sis and solv­ing it is much more effi­cient than mind­less­ly imple­ment­ing the Lean algorithm.

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