The core idea is to maximize customer
value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for
customers with fewer resources.
A lean organization understands
customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The
ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect
value creation process that has zero waste.
Eliminating waste
along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes
that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make
products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared
with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing
customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast
throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more
accurate.
A popular
misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean
applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost
reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.
The term
"lean" was coined to describe Toyota's business during the late 1980s
by a research team headed by Jim Womack, Ph.D., at MIT's International Motor
Vehicle Program.
(Taken
from www.lean.org)
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