What is lean?
Lean is a business approach that is used in manufacturing and service industries to eliminate waste, increase processes and reduce costs. In short, lean means using fewer resources to create more value for consumers.
This term was used to describe Toyota Production System, also called JIT or Just in Time Production, in the 1980s. After the Second World War, Toyota became successful when the Japanese owners adopted many of the American techniques for quality and production. Their production process was based on Edwards Deming’s ideas for statistical quality control as well as Henry Ford’s manufacturing techniques.
Lean manufacturing consists of well-defined tools that companies can use to control and reduce many works in process, consequently eliminating non-value adding activities. When an organization adopts lean principles, more focus will be placed on key processes to constantly increase customer value without creating unnecessary waste.
 For this to happen, lean thinkers will make changes to optimize the flow of services and products through value streams which flows across assets, technologies and departments to consumers. Lean manufacturing will eliminate waste from all value streams, rather than at isolated stages. This helps to create processes which need less space, capital, human effort and time to produce at significantly less costs with hardly any defects, when compared to traditional systems. As a result, companies will be able to react quickly to customer demands with high quality, high variety and low cost.
There is a common misconception that lean is only suited for manufacturing industries, but this is not the case. Lean can be applied to every process and business. Today, businesses in all services and industries including governments and healthcare are using the principles of lean. Some companies will use the principles and methodologies for their own system without referring to lean manufacturing. Toyota Production System is a good example of this. By doing this, they are demonstrating that lean is the way how a company operates and it’s not temporary program for cost reduction.
When a company is changing their traditional ways to lean thinking, this process is often described as a lean transformation or just transformation. The entire process usually requires a company to completely transform how business is conducted, which calls for long-term commitment and perseverance.
Essentially, lean is regarded by many as a set business tools that can assist in identifying and eliminating waste or muda. Some of the lean tools include Value Stream Mapping, Kanban, 5S and poka-yoke. When waste is removed from business processes, production cost and time will reduce and quality will improve. Ultimately, lean seeks to make work processes simple to understand, execute and manage.
