What is Lean?

Lean is about minimising or avoiding all forms of waste:

• Lean is a way of thinking
• Lean is a way of doing more with less – less human effort, less equipment, less materials, less time and less space
• Lean aims to come closer and closer to providing customers with what meets their needs
• At the heart of Lean are flexible, motivated team members continuously solving problems

Lean enterprise is about delivering the right service at minimum cost. This requires companies to focus on:

• Customer value by understanding and agreeing exactly what your customer needs
• Understanding all your business processes and how they impact on customer value
• Smoothing the flow
• Pulling value through the chain
• Continuing to attack waste

Lean seeks to:

• Keep work flowing, synchronised to delivery requirements
• Achieve error prevention rather than checking
• Minimise work in progress, queues and delays
• Work to the beat of customer demand
• Enable people to work in self managed teams to deliver first class service
• Achieve active involvement of everyone in the improvement process  
• Focus on process not function

The Six Sigma Group
Bourton Hall, Rugby,
Warwickshire CV23 9SD UK,
Telephone 01926 632888.
E-mail info@sixsigmagroup.co.uk