worksection
Blog
Lean: How to implement?
  •   17 min read

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.

⇆

esc
Share
или
Ohter
Monday.com Alternative: 11 Better Options for Project Management in 2026
TL;DR: Monday.com runs $14/user monthly and honestly gets overwhelming fast if you're a smaller team. I tested 11 alternatives over three months—one's 56% cheaper, another has features Monday completely...
10 September 2026   •   21 min read
PM school
10 Best Project Management Software for Small Business in 2026
Small businesses don’t shop for project management software because they like software. They shop because something broke. A deadline slipped. A client asked for a status update nobody could answer. Somebody...
2 September 2026   •   22 min read
Ohter
10 Best Wrike Alternatives for Project Management in 2026
Wrike is a genuinely capable project management tool. That’s half the problem. Most teams that leave don’t leave because something broke. They leave because they spent three months configuring folder...
26 August 2026   •   22 min read
Get started now
Please enter your real email 🙂
Cancel
PM Worksection Theory Team development Project Management Project management Interview More 105...
PM Worksection Theory Team development Project Management Project management Interview Task manager Task management Time tracker Clients Teams Experience Kanban Gantt Chart WS School Projects Comparison Onboarding Tasks Lean production Comments Timer Time accounting Reports Leader development Video Advices Integrations Update Planning Scrum Agile Calendar Statuses Creative teams Marketing Business process Cloud management Labels Human Resource Management Message Files IT SMART Partnership Subtasks UI Top 10 Productivity Asana Jira Promo actions Online work Waterfall Priorities Methodologies Security Financial accounting IOS Android Filter Basecamp Remote work Search Trello Priorities Bitrix24 Internet marketing Notifications Digital agency Architecture Checklists Accounting of expenses Migration Departments Self-development Task list Roman.ua Design Media Interface Planning Business management system Interview Documents Roles Responsible API Infographics Team development Image Engineering Connections Time control Reactions Emoji App Import Synchronization Service companies SEO Control Review Team efficiency Expenses Rights Export Google Hot tasks Kaizen OKR