A Definition of Lean
Lean is a methodology of continuous improvement with the goal of reducing waste by eliminating unnecessary steps within a process. Steps which don't add value from the customer's point of view are considered waste.There are 7 types of waste:
- Over-production against plan
- Waiting time of operators and machines
- Unnecessary transportation
- Waste in the process itself
- Excess stock of material and components
- Non value-adding motion
- Defects in quality
Whilst Lean sometimes is only seen as a set of tools for continuous improvement, a Lean mindset should be encouraged throughout the whole company. Promoting Lean at all levels will lead to a much better result. For more definitions click here.
According to Nick Ruhmann Lean is comprised of three organizational aspects:
- A common philosophy
- A common set of techniques and methods
- A common set of rules for managing & developing people and processes
To read his whole article click here.
The 10 Best Kaizen Books
Kaizen : The key to Japan's competitive success
Masaaki Imai
Level: Introductory
"A comprehensive handbook of 16 Kaizen management practices that can be put to work. KAIZEN uses more than 100 examples in action and contains 15 corporate case studies."
One Small Step Can Change Your Life
Robert Maurer
Level: Introductory
A cornerstone for all Kaizen Practitioners, this book serves as a practical and inspirational guide to incorporating Kaizen and its powerful principles into one's daily life.
The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time
Robert Maurer
Level: Introductory
Filled with practical tips and ready-to-use tools for managers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, The Spirit of Kaizen is the essential handbook for a changing world. You’ll learn how to think outside the suggestion box, remove mental blindfolds, manage stress with one-minute exercises, and handle rising health-care costs.
Creating a Kaizen Culture: Align the Organization, Achieve Breakthrough Results, and Sustain the Gains
John Miller, Mike Wroblewski, Jaime Villafeurte
Level: Moderate Experience
Co-written by leaders at the Kaizen Institute, Creating a Kaizen Culture explains how to enable an adaptive, excellent, and sustainable organization by leveraging core kaizen values and the behaviors they generate.
View the full List of the 10 Best Kaizen Books here.
The 5 Lean Principles
According to Womack and Jones, there are five key lean principles: value, value stream, flow, pull, and perfection:
- Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.
- Map the value Stream: Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value.
- Create flow: Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer.
- Establish pull: As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.
- Seek perfection: As value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste.
The five-step thought process for guiding the implementation of lean techniques.
Image copyright 2016, Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.
What happens if we combine Lean and Six Sigma?
Combining two powerful methodologies can only create an even more powerful tool. Six Sigma also is a methodology of continuous improvement but instead of achieving this through reducing unnecessary steps, this methodology focuses on reducing waste through diminishing variations within the process. This can be accomplished by the implementing DMAIC, a Six Sigma sub-methodology. DMAIC is the abbreviation for:
- Define: define the problem in order to solve it.
- Measure: measure all of your available data as well as take a more detailed look into your processes.
- Analysis: perform analysis of your findings and figure out the problem's root.
- Improvement: once you analyzed your data, find possible solutions and implement them.
- and Control: ensure to maintain your new implemented process.
Lean and Six Sigma are two different approaches to reach the same goal. Besides reducing waste they aim to minimize costs and maximize efficiency. Although they are different they work best hand in hand. Click here to download the new Free 5S Guide to 'learn the principles of 5S/6S philosophy and how to successfully implement it in any facility'.
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A critical view on Lean Six Sigma
Every methodology has its advantages and disadvantages. Many different sources agree that the Lean Six Sigma Methodology is meant to fail and and that it would be a waste of time to implement it. At the same time many businesses and companies "insist that Lean Six-Sigma programs have been wildly successful in their companies". We are wondering if Lean six sigma really works. Why are the opinions so different and what are the reasons for failures when using this methodology? Could it be "a lack of cohesion on the Operational Excellence Journey"? Read more about Joseph Paris thoughts on: 'Lean Six Sigma Must be A Waste of Time and Energy, or; Why You Need Lean Six Sigma'
Maybe we should just abandon continuous improvement? In his article, in the Harvard Business Review, Ron Ashkenas states: "Absolutely not! It has created a tremendous value and still drives competitive advantage in many companies and industries. But perhaps it's time to nuance our approach." We should think about how and where it makes sense to implement it in the organization, so that it doesn't discourage creativity. We should also consider eliminating and disrupting processes instead of improving them. And finally, as the Lean methodology has to become part of the culture we should always look at how a change will impact the dynamics in the company.
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Lean Six Sigma vs Lean
Accoring to Nick Ruhmann:
"The Lean community is divided into 2 groups with different views on Lean:
- The "Lean Crowd" (lean is a complete and total way of doing business)
- The Lean Six Sigma Crowd (lean gives us extra tools to use)
Lean is comprised of three organizational aspects:
- A common philosophy
- A common set of techniques and methods
- A common set of rules for managing & developing people and processes
So if you look at how this works in Toyota, you could conceive of a diagram like the following:
Common Philosophy:
- you can't show respect without solving problems together and
- you don't get continuous improvement without mutual respect.
Common Techniques and Methods
This is the common "TPS Temple" or "House of Lean" that gets depicted. It's an expression of the technical way Toyota approaches production.
A Foundation of Stability, made possible through Heijunka (Leveling), Standardized Work, and Kaizen.
Two equal pillars of "Just in Time" and "Jidoka"(Built in Quality).
Just this technical aspect shows how lean would NEVER "make defects faster".
You can only increase process velocity at the rate for which quality and stability will allow - each serves the other.
Common Managerial Rules
This perspective actually comes from Steven J. Spear, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. His research into Toyota's ability to "outrace their competition by out learning them" lead to the formation of 4 basic capabilities and 4 basic rules that Toyota and other highly effective organizations operate under:
The Four Capabilities:
- Understand Good Process Design (How to make problems visible)
- Solve Problems when and where they occur (Stop and Fix)
- Share learning laterally across the organization (Yokoten)
- Leaders are Teachers (Teach others how to do 1 -3)".
Click here to read the whole article by Nick Ruhmann.
How to start doing lean
After learning all about what Lean and Six Sigma is, what can we do with this knowledge? Once that we decided that Lean is the right Methodology for us and that we want to implement it we still don't know how to start, right? Click here to learn more about an expert's approach to starting with Lean and download his presentation on the topic:
- Ways to kick it off depending on who told you to do it
- Create a structure that minimizes the number of yearly evaluations you have to do
- Picking projects, assuming you have a choice
- Calculating ROI (I have no idea, I just use lots of big words and talk fast)
- Different ways to roll this out and not lose your job
Test your knowledge on Lean and answer this Question: We are a small company with approximately 150 employees, 3 manufacturing locations and 5 nonwoven processing lines. The nonwoven process is a continuous-flow process as opposed to assembly. The decision has been made to embark on a lean/continuous-improvement initiative for our company.
There is no one in our company who specifically has lean experience. Do you have any advice on the best way to begin this journey? The company is open to using outside consultants. Compare your approach to Larry Fast's explanation in his article on 'What is the best way to begin a Lean or Continuous Improvement Journey'.
Top Case Study
Courtesy of Bose Corporation, 'The Bose Lean Journey' offers a demonstration of the Lean Enterprise Maturity Model as an inflection point in the Lean Enterprise journey at Bose Corporation:
- Where are we now? - understanding the current state
- Setting a multi-year target condition - a clear vision for the future
- The value is in the struggle - allow people to own it
- Strive for true behaviour change - not just a number
- Encourage Autonomy
Click here to download the full presentation.
For more case studies click here.
10 Books You Should Read
The Machine That Changed the World
James P. Womack, Daniel T. Joners & Daniel Roos
Level: Moderate Experience
"The book that coined the term “Lean” based on the outcomes of more than 5 years of study of the Japanese automobile industry by MIT. Womack, Jones and Roos thoroughly document the whole of the Toyota Production System, pinpoint the advantages of Lean manufacturing over the prevailing mass-production system used in the western world at the time, and correctly predicted the rise of Lean manufacturing principles, not just in automobile manufacturing, but in any value-creating endeavor."
Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production
Taiichi Ono
Level: Moderate Experience
"Combining his candid insights with a rigorous analysis of Toyota's attempts at Lean production, Ohno's book explains how Lean principles can improve any production endeavor. A historical and philosophical description of just-in-time and Lean manufacturing, this work is a must read for all students of human progress. On a more practical level, it continues to provide inspiration and instruction for those seeking to improve efficiency through the elimination of waste."
The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to Nearly100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed
Michael L. George, David Rowlands, Mark Price, John Maxey
Level: Essential Reading
"The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook is today's most complete and results based reference to the tools and concepts needed to understand, implement, and leverage Lean Six Sigma."
The Toyota Way
Jeffrey Liker
Level: Moderate Experience
"In The Toyota Way, Dr. Liker shifted the focus away from superficial tools and techniques of the production system and onto the 14 key principles that define the Toyota 
A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System: Single-minute
Exchange of Die System
Shigeo Shingo
Level: Expert
Written by the industrial engineer who developed SMED (single-minute exchange of die) for Toyota, A Revolution in Manufacturing provides a full overview of this powerful just in timeproduction tool. It offers the most complete and detailed instructions available anywhere for transforming a manufacturing environment in ways that will speed up production and make small lot inventories feasible.
Toyota Kata
Mike Rother
Level: Expert
"Of all the texts on Lean and continuous improvement, Toyota Kata achieves what no other book before it has fully accomplished: translating Lean into a set of simple, practical routines, organized around improvement and coaching, that can be readily and effectively practiced at all levels of an organization."
Click here to see the full List of Top 10 Lean Six Sigma Books.
Never stop learning!
To help you get the most information as possible and to find exactly the information you need right now we listed our Top 10 OpEx blogs. Take a look at some of the best blogs for Operational Excellence news, thought-pieces & inspiration:
All About Lean
AllAboutLean.com blogs on the different aspects of lean manufacturing and lean administration. The blog has a strong focus is on practicability, although some posts will also delve into theoretical details.
Mark Graban's Lean Blog
Lean Blog covers a number of themes about lean that are universal, regardless of industry. This blog led to Shingo Award-winning books including Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement .
A Lean Journey: The Quest for True North
This site is dedicated to sharing lessons and experiences along the Lean Journey in the Quest for True North. The blog also serves as the source for learning and reflection which are critical elements in Lean Thinking.
Billy's Blog
Bill Waddell is a Global Supply chain expert and one of the original Lean Accounting "Thought Leaders". He has over 30 years experience in Manufacturing and Accounting, and is widely regarded as being at the forefront of Lean Manufacturing.
See the full List of Top 10 OpEx blogs.
Get the right Training!
Sometimes books and blogs don't help and you just need to learn it from professionals. You can take lessons and learn about Lean Six Sigma from experts and get certified at the end of the courses.
Like in some martial arts there are three categories of certification called belts:
- yellow belt
- green belt
- black belt
- Master black belt
found on whcawical.org
But not every provider uses the same levels!
There are many different providers, so you can choose the right one for you:
APMG: https://apmg-international.com/product/lean-six-sigma
SimpliLearn: https://www.simplilearn.com/reasons-to-do-six-sigma-certification-article
BQF: https://www.bqf.org.uk/what-we-do/lean-six-sigma-academy/certification/
IASSC:https://www.iassc.org/
But what are the benefits of getting the certified?
It can have a great impact on your future career for many reasons. Being certified can be useful in many different industries and will look great on your CV. It will not only show that you are committed to keep learning but it will also show your analytical skills. It will also improve the business you work in!
According to a survey carried out by indeed.com, the salary for Six Sigma certified individuals routinely break into the $100,000+ pay bracket, and are among the highest-paid professionals globally.
