A Very Simple Introduction to Lean Thinking

“If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.”  -- W. Edwards Deming

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Womack and Jones open their classic 'Lean Thinking' with the following:

Muda. It’s the one word of Japanese you really must know. It sounds awful … and it should, because muda means “waste,” specifically any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value.

Lean is about the elimination of waste. This is a simple concept, but one that can be very intricate and complex to apply.

This is partly because there are many forms of waste:
Mistakes which require rework
Wasted steps
Inventory that will not be used (cf. Just-In-Time)
Time- waiting for one process to complete before beginning another process
Etc.

Let’s apply a very simple example using the basic process model of feeding Spenser the Black Lab. We begin with the very simple model:

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 If you have ever fed a dog you will know that when it comes to the process of preparing dinner, the type of waste the canine is most concerned with eliminating is that of delay. To that end, Spenser made a suggestion that ‘leans’ the above process by eliminating the wasteful step of waiting for the water to warm. The result is that he gets to eat more quickly...

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This is a very very simple example- but it serves to illustrate the concept of lean. Remember Deming’s point-

If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t understand what you are doing.

That is step one- define your processes. Once you have done that you can begin to manage those processes. Lean is one method used to manage processes. You apply Lean by closely, very very closely, examining your processes to eliminate as much waste as you can.