News Feature | October 10, 2014

Which IT Customers Want To Apply Lean Principles?

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

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The concept of lean manufacturing, initially developed by Toyota Corporation after World War II, was so successful that by the 1970s it was being applied in manufacturing facilities throughout the world. Coined by Jim Womack, Ph.D., and his MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program team in the late 1980s, it was created as a label for Toyota's business model.

According to the Lean Enterprise Institute, the premise of lean manufacturing is to produce an item based on customer specifications, in the fastest and most efficient way and at the best possible price, ultimately maximizing customer value while minimizing waste.

Beyond manufacturing, you will find the principle applied — and aspired to — in other areas including finance, education, healthcare, and even software development.

A lean organization concentrates its fundamental processes to continuously increase customer value, aiming to establish a perfect value manufacturing process with zero waste. The Lean Enterprise Institute states, to accomplish this, management must not focus on separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments, but rather must concentrate on the optimization of the entire value stream, as products and services move horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers. Organizations implement lean principles with a process that includes these steps:

  • Specify Value. Creating a product according to customer specifications, with value the customer perceives.
  • Identify Steps. Map out the value stream for the product, eliminating steps that don’t contribute to its value.
  • Process Flow. Facilitate taking those steps in a sequence that leads smoothly and efficiently to the customer.
  • Pull Value. Let customers pull value from the next activity in the process.
  • Continuous Improvement. With each cycle through the process, make additional improvements, until it is perfected and all waste has been eliminated. 

The Institute points out lean is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.

For answers to questions about lean and for more information, visit www.lean.org.