Lean is a philosophy of continuous improvement. A lean organization focuses on building a culture that respects all employees and enables them to pursue opportunities to improve their work and share ideas for continuous improvement. Through this culture the lean principles of increasing customer value, eliminating waste (or extra work), and optimizing operations can be achieved.
You can use this guide to learn about the Lean culture, tools, and methods. It can also give you ideas of processes that could be improved or projects that could be embarked upon. The Lean tools and methods can be used to organize a supply closet or a Google Drive (or anything in between); streamline purchase requests, instruction requests, or any type of procedure; do project management on large or small projects; brainstorm ideas; help to prioritize or decide between options; and many other ways. This guide can also be used to contact the librarian for facilitation by using the email function on the left-hand bar.
Used for improving organization of a physical or digital work space, the name comes from the five steps required to implement and the words (each starting with S) used to describe each step: sort, set in order, scrub, standardize, and sustain.
The 5 Whys technique is a simple and effective tool for solving problems. Its primary goal is to find the exact reason (root cause) that causes a given problem by asking a sequence of “Why” questions. Not all problems have a single root cause. If one wishes to uncover multiple root causes, the method must be repeated asking a different sequence of questions each time.
Waste in Lean is defined as non-value adding activities or actions, meaning activities that do not contribute to the needs of the customer. The customer in Lean is anyone benefiting from your actions, including coworkers, patrons, etc).
1. Defects: in materials or information. This includes physical defects or miscommunication. This typically results in either reworking or scrapping the product.
2. Over Production: producing more than is required, or producing something way sooner than it is required when the customer doesn’t want it yet or isn’t ready for it.
3. Waiting: the time that information and materials spend waiting for the next step of the process to begin. A bottleneck is an example of this waste: where information and materials stack up at one person or one step. This usually means that the work is not evenly distributed.
4. Non-utilized talent: unused employee skill and creativity. Non-utilized talent could include insufficient training, poor incentives, not asking for employee feedback, and placing employees in positions below their skills and qualifications.
5. Transportation: of materials and information by itself does not transform them into what the customer wants. Some transportation may be required but if there are several extra steps or movements this becomes a waste.
6. Inventory: excess inventory can be caused by over-purchasing, overproducing work in process (WIP), or producing more products than the customer needs. Excess inventory prevents detecting production-related problems since defects have time to accumulate before it is discovered. As a result, more work will be needed to correct the defects.
7. Motion: The waste in motion includes any unnecessary movement of people, equipment, or machinery. wasted motion can include walking, reaching to get materials, searching for files, sifting through inventory to find what is needed, excess mouse clicks, and double entry of data.
8. Extra Processing: refers to doing more work, adding more components, or having more steps in a product or service than what is required by the customer. Over-processing can include generating more detailed reports than needed, having unnecessary steps in the purchasing process, requiring unnecessary signatures on a document, double entry of data, requiring more forms than needed, and having an extra step in a workflow.
The affinity diagram works by helping the team organize large numbers of ideas, usually as the result of a brainstorming session. The process allows team members to organize the ideas by category and look at the problem or issues from a new perspective of relationships and patterns.
A prioritization/ decision making tool. ICE is an acronym for the three factors that should be considered whenever priorities are set: impact, cost and effort. For some decisions the top priorities are different, ICE can still be used by changing from impact, cost, and effort to whatever is more appropriate.
Japanese for "improvement" or "change for the better.” Kaizen is a philosophy of continuous improvement. A Kaizen mostly refers to a team based, problem solving, continuous improvement event.
The Newspaper is a tool used to help track the implementation of improvements and changes. It is used to establish the steps that need to be taken to sustain and monitor the improvements. They are used in Kaizens and other types of continuous improvement events, but can be used anywhere.
The PACE Prioritization Tool is used to prioritize a list of countermeasures or ways to solve a problem. PACE stands for: Priority, Action, Consider, Eliminate. These four categories reflect the order in which countermeasures (or solutions you're deciding between) should be implemented and/or eliminated from consideration.
Tool used in improvement events or meetings, where the facilitator documents things that come up, but are out of scope, to be revisited later.
This can be used in any workshops or improvement event. A piece of paper or electronic document is divided in half. The half with the plus contains things the attendees liked or that should be kept in future iterations. The half with the delta (indicated by a triangle) contains things attendees were confused by, needed more information on, or already new. In short, the half with the delta is things that need to be changed.
An identified reason for the presence of a defect or problem. The most basic reason, which if eliminated, would prevent recurrence. The source or origin of an event.
A place to write down solutions that come up during a continuous improvement event. This is to help prevent "solution jumping" where the discussion and working through of the problem being addressed during a continuous improvement event hasn't been completed yet, but solutions keep being suggested prematurely.
A spaghetti diagram is defined as a visual representation of the path of an item or activity through a process. As a process analysis tool, the tracing of a path enables one to identify redundancies in the work flow and opportunities to improve.
A swimlane diagram is a type of flowchart that delineates who does what in a process. Using the metaphor of lanes in a pool, a swimlane diagram provides clarity and accountability by placing process steps within the horizontal or vertical “swimlanes” of a particular employee, work group or department. It shows connections, communication and handoffs between these lanes, and it can serve to highlight waste, redundancy and inefficiency in a process.
Value stream mapping is a flowchart method to illustrate, analyze and improve the steps required to deliver a product or service. VSM reviews the flow of process steps and information from origin to delivery to the customer.
The culture of Lean is a culture of continuous improvement. In order for continuous improvement to be possible, respect for all employees, encouragement for all employees to pursue opportunities to improve their work, and opportunities to share ideas for continuous improvement are crucial. The ground rules described below are a further expansion of the components of Lean Culture.
These Lean Ground Rules are used at the start of all continuous improvement events and can also be used at the start of new working groups or team meetings. Periodic reminders when new people join or when it's been a while since the last reminder are also useful. They are intended to get everyone on the same page from the onset; avoiding confusion, rework, and waste.
1. No blame environment. When there's a problem, it's the process not the person.
2. No silent objectors. Everyone is there for a reason and potential problems and pitfalls will be identified sooner if everyone voices their concerns.
3. Those who do the work need to be involved in the discussions. Those who do the work are the most familiar with the current problems and what would potentially work instead. Also, involving those who do the work will create buy-in.
5. Those who do the work should feel empowered to make changes or question the workflow.
6. Continuous improvement means changes both big and small are always possible (within reason).
7. Set a plan for sustaining the changes/ updates that were made. Check back in to see if it is working and don't be afraid to continue to update.
8. Outside eyes or "fresh eyes" are useful when possible in a continuous improvement event. Outside eyes refer to someone who is not intimately familiar with the process. They can identify potential problems that the rest of the team was too close to see and help challenge the "old way" of doing things.