How to Run a Lean Business

Lean is one of the most significant business management and manufacturing approaches in today's commercial world. Developed over time by business thinkers, and employed by Toyota's visionary management team, the approach has proved effective across multiple business sectors. Follow these steps to run a Lean business.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Evaluate the need and derive a vision. The age-old principle, "If it ain't broke don't fix it," applies equally to Lean implementations as to anything else. In fact, Lean advocates are the first to mention that needless change is wasteful. The first step of running a Lean business, then, is to run strategy sessions with executives and management to determine if there is a need for Lean-type change and what that need specifically is.
2. Make a cultural change. Businesses that successfully integrate Lean institute cultural changes within the business. Specifically, middle management needs to be able to constantly endorse Lean principles to inspire a dogged observance of waste-cutting techniques and, importantly, mindsets by every single employee of the company.
3. Cut across functional barriers and departments. Lean must permeate all aspects of the business and should be run as a program in parallel. To integrate it, you should implement the program step by step, rather than integrating the entirety of the Lean program department by department. This way all areas of your business will run the program at the same time with similar levels of understanding.
4. Evaluate the program. As you integrate and apply Lean to your business you need to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in changing your business. You also need to assess how effectively the Lean implementation and adherence is over time, making sure that adherence to the program increase rather than plateaus or decreases as financial quarters pass by.