Identify value Lean teams constantly review their product and service from the eyes of the customer. How does the product help the customer: do their job accomplish their mission improve their position? This helps them determine the unique value their product or service provides. Guiding questions: What does our customer need? Why and when do they need it? What are we producing that fulfills that need? How and when are we getting it to them?
What happens next? Does it come to the factory pre-cut or do we cut it to specifications? Who does that? Where do we get wood glue, nails, and finishing seal?
For production: Where do we keep the tools needed? Does it change if the order is for 50 tables or for 5,? You need to distinguish the value-adding from waste activities. It is crucial for everybody to be on the same page about it, so this should be a collective activity. To understand what value is, consider the end product of your efforts and what your customer gets from it.
By definition, value is everything that your customer is paying you for. However, some teams are not producing a direct value for the company's customer but are enhancing the overall value that the organization delivers e. In this case, the customer is your company. Lean identifies 7 types of waste.
Waste activities can be categorized as pure and necessary. The main difference between them is that some waste activities are necessary to support the value-adding ones while pure waste activities only bring harm to the Lean flow of work. Going back to the software development example, quality assurance is the brightest example of a necessary waste. The second of the 5 principles of Lean is all about the stream of value.
In Lean management, this is usually done with the help of Kanban boards. The Kanban board is a tool for mapping every step of your process and, therefore, visualizing your team's value stream.
Developed as part of the Toyota production system , which laid the foundations of Lean management, the basic Kanban board is a vertical flat surface divided by columns for the three primary states of any assignment:.
Although visualizing your workflow this way is a good start, you should consider mapping your process more precisely by including the steps that compose each stage. For example, a "Requested" stage may have two steps — order received and ready to start.
Usually, "In progress" consists of the greatest number of steps. In the software development context, you would normally have steps like tech design, development, testing, and at least a couple of review stages. When mapping your value stream for the first time, you should focus on value-adding steps to create a Lean process. Be sure to correct it occasionally as your process evolves.
In the world of Lean, flow is a key concept. Since any kind of waiting is a waste, when creating a flow of value, your goal is to ensure smooth delivery from the second you receive an order to the moment when you deliver it to the customer. That is why the Lean principle of create knowledge says that Lean organizations must provide the infrastructure to properly document and retain valuable learnings.
Lean thinking is derived from the manufacturing philosophy of Toyota, which emphasized a just-in-time system of inventory management. Starting too early often results in waste in the form of excessive planning or context switching where teams focus their resources on the wrong priorities.
The Lean principle of defer commitment says that Lean organizations should also function as just-in-time systems, waiting until the last responsible moment to make decisions. This allows Lean organizations to have the agility to make informed decisions, with the most relevant, up-to-date information available.
The success of any Lean initiative hinges upon one Lean principle: Respect people. Businesses design and deliver products that serve customers. If we look at things from a process perspective, the journey to customers goes from an idea to planning, design, production, and ultimately to delivery.
Doing it right means a company respects people at multiple levels, resulting in a win-win for all:. The process of creating Lean teams involves forming teams around current processes: Defining those processes, analyzing those processes, then creating teams focused on improving those processes. The roles and responsibilities of each team, as well as the methodology for improving processes, must be clearly identified. Each team must be responsible for making reasonable changes without being required to move through a traditional hierarchical business structure.
When it comes to using Lean principles in your organization, let Lean management principles guide you. Embrace the Lean mindset. Consider your options carefully — even if it means making organizational changes to fully support your initiatives. This will lay the foundation for a successful Lean experience.
Lean is a mindset that helps you make smarter decisions about how to invest your time, energy, and money. Rachaelle Lynn, a Certified SAFe Agilist, is a marketing manager and subject matter expert at Planview, a market-leading provider of project portfolio management, lean and agile delivery, project management, and innovation management software. Guide Lean Principles Guide. Creating feedback loops that enable more effective team members to deliver higher quality products to customers faster is at the core of Lean thinking.
Optimize the whole Every business represents a value stream, the sequence of activities required to design, produce, and deliver a product or service to customers. A five-step thought process proposed by Womack and Jones in to guide managers through a lean transformation. The five principles are:. Process: Once purpose is clarified, focus on the process value stream used to achieve this objective.
These primary processes are made possible by many secondary, support processes inside the organization and upstream. People : After identifying the primary and support processes needed to create value for the customer, make someone responsible for each value stream.
This value-stream manager must engage and align the efforts of everyone touching each value stream to move it steadily toward the customer while elevating performance from its current state to an ever-better future state.
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