We aim to help you to successfully implement Lean Change principles in a way in which you will Learn credible information, and be able to effectively Apply this to your own area and function of Work, and also to support you to Grow your own knowledge and experience.

The whole web-site is structured and sequenced.  Within the sections Learn, Apply and Grow (displayed to the left) and Resources (displayed to the right) you will achieve best understanding by selecting each titled area consecutively down the page.

You can find out a little more about LeanChange, or begin to learn to Understand the Lean Change Essentials below.

Lean Change Essentials - Lean, Customer Focus, Value, Waste, Process, Metrics & KPIs:

These are the absolutely basic critical elements which must be learnt and well understood when considering the requirements of any Lean Change; they act as a touchstone to constantly return to.

Lean - Lean is a philosophy and a way of thinking and approaching your organisation. It shows you how to get to the situation where, in your organisation, everybody cares about the same things, the same principles, and aim to attain the same results and outcomes in the short, medium and long term, in the same way.

Customers provide us with an external focus, which increases in its demands, to train our efforts to use a structured emphasis on continual process improvement to satisfy the customer.

Lean Change outcomes are achieving a profit, through improving productivity and ensuring in process quality, satisfying more customers more quickly through reducing lead-times while treating all people with respect and dignity.

This is achieved by the relentless elimination of waste (see below), in all processes through the true involvement and empowerment of all people within the organisation. This creates a more engaged set of people, whose contribution is acknowledged and valued, robust competitiveness which is inimitable and creates many strong differential advantages. The constant quest to maximise customer value, builds the ability to more closely understand and respond to changing market, customer needs and/or wants.

This leads to greater strength in the competitive environment and so more and more work can be won, and delivered, with the same resource. This does not mean people working harder, but instead working more in line with better understood customer needs.

Customer Focus - Customer Focus is an often misunderstood concept, and truly involves fully and openly listening to and developing a real relationship with both your direct and indirect customers which allows you to listen to and interrogate requirements or desires and more closely align your development and operational processes, as well as to make customers feel and be truly valued and respected.

Value - True value is actually Customer Value and is what the customer buys when they purchase any product or service. This not only includes tangible product or service qualities or uses, but also intangible ones, which together are known as perceived value.

Waste - Waste is much better understood as non-Value added. Often waste is considered as being rejects or defective, i.e. material waste - either part or fully processed.  When we consider that waste is what the customer does not expect to pay for we can begin to gain clarity about what to address to improve any process.

Classically seven wastes are categorised, these being: Overproduction, Inventory, Overprocessing, Waiting, Motion, Transportation, and Defects. Often an eighth waste is added, being the waste of people's talents or potential abilities.

It is however more insightful and useful to use the three wastes of Muda, Mura, and Muri which leads us to view Excess, Overburden and Variability as wastes in processes. These are useful as they lead us to consider and constantly question how to improve a process, and give us the insight that to make a process as Meagre, Smoothly Balanced and Consistent as possible, produces better outcomes.

Process - All processes have definable and measurable inputs and outputs and require feedback to improve. By thinking in terms of a process rather than a business or operations or "black-arts" we can begin to create an expectation of streamline methods and connections, and this helps us to question complex methods and seek more simple, undestandable and well-defined ways of operating.

Metrics & KPIs - We must measure both the inputs and the outputs of processes and of an organsiation which is itself a process. Additionally all organisations need to measure profitability (or at least balance if they are non-profit). Key Lean Change metrics include safety, morale, involvement, productivity, quality and lead-time.

If you now recognise the need to actually use LeanChange methods, then you must first clearly Establish the Motive for Urgent Intense Action

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