Overview
“Lean” focuses on maximizing customer value by removing waste and eliminating defects. Lean is a mindset that everyone in an organization should be able to spot waste and bring it up to management to be addressed.
Although Lean uses data, its tools are not as analytical or data-rich as those used in Six Sigma in manufacturing. For example, Lean tools are more about understanding the process, looking for waste, preventing mistakes, and documenting what you did. Lean seeks to make it easy to do things the right way and hard to do things the wrong way.
There are many examples of the positive impact of Lean implementation in just about every industry and type of organization. Dramatic cost savings, lead time and inventory reductions, as well as many other improvements have been cited by businesses around the world. Familiarizing yourself with Lean tools is a great way to get started in implementing Lean.
How can you use and apply these Lean tools yourself? One approach is to use Minitab Engage, the only solution designed to start, track, manage, and share innovation and improvement initiatives from idea generation through execution. Engage combines a desktop toolkit of tools for executing your projects, with a web-based dashboard for visualizing benefits and project information. Using a workflow, the software will manage the flow of ideas to projects to completion, effortlessly streamlining phase reviews and approvals.
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