Lean is often called “Lean Manufacturing", since it is best known for making improvements in manufacturing settings.  But Lean at its best should be applied to ALL parts of the company, whether in manufacturing or service.

Lean is the ideal way of producing goods or services while removing or reducing non-value added activities (waste or muda) and implementing or improving flow, as opposed to batch and queue processes. Lean is a broad process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) which is legendary for its focus on reduction of the 7 forms of waste and its focus on overall customer value.

Waste can be defined as anything (activity, material, etc) which the customer or client is not willing to pay for. In most traditional companies, 95% of every dollar spent on labor is non-value added or waste.

The Continuous Improvement Center can help you learn how to identify and eliminate the non-value added activities (waste) in your processes and dramatically improve your overall performance! A great to get started is our Lean Quick-Start one day course.  If you have questions and would like more information feel free to contact us.