The principles of Lean Thinking

Page 1 of 23                                 © S A Partners 1993‐2010

Professor Peter Hines1

Chairman, S A Partners
Co‐Founder & Honorary Professor,
Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University

The Lean Principles

The book Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones (1996) provided the world with a
vision of what Lean was about.  The authors commented: “Lean Thinking can be summarized in five
principles: precisely specify value by specific product, identify the value stream for each product,
make value flow without interruptions, let the customer pull value from the producer, and pursue
perfection” (page 10).

They defined each of these principles in more detail as follows:

Value: “The critical starting point for Lean Thinking is value. Value can only be defined by the
ultimate customer.  And it’s only meaningful when expressed in terms of a specific product (a good
or a service, and often both at once) which meets the customer’s needs at a specific price at a
specific time” (page 16)

Value Stream: “The value stream is the set of all the specific actions required to bring a specific
product (whether a good, a service, or, increasingly, a combination of the two) through
the….problem‐solving task from concept through detailed design and engineering to production
launch, the information management task running from order‐taking through detailed scheduling to
delivery, and the physical transformation task proceeding from raw materials to a finished product in
2the hands of the customer” (page 19).

Flow: “Once value has been precisely specified, the value stream for a specific product family fully
mapped by the Lean enterprise, and obviously wasteful steps eliminated, it’s time for the next step in
Lean Thinking….make the remaining, value‐creating steps flow” (page 21).

Pull: “Pull in simplest terms means that no one upstream should produce a good or service until the
customer downstream asks for it” (page 67).

Perfection: “As organisations begin to accurately specify value, identify the entire value stream,
make the value‐creating steps for specific products flow continuously, and let customers pull value
from the enterprise, something very odd begins to happen….suddenly perfection….doesn’t seem like
a crazy idea” (page 25).
1
I am grateful for the debate, input and assistance of the following to this white paper: colleagues at S A Partners especially
Chris Butterworth, Kevin Eyre, Gary Griffiths and Jill Whinfrey; members of the Lean Business System and other specific Lean
Business System Linked In groups that I run and participants at the 2009 LERC annual conference.
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LEAN BUSINESS SYSTEM

Rethinking the Lean Principles

Since Lean Thinking was published in 1996, our understanding of what Lean is has moved on3
.  Lean
has also been applied across a wider range of manufacturing and service industries4
and the issue of
sustaining change has become more central5
. As a result I believe it is now time to revisit the
Womack & Jones five principles.  In order to do this, it will be helpful to understand what the main
areas of concerns might be.  These include the facts:

 Many organisations have failed to interpret the original principles well
 In hindsight, there are gaps or weaknesses in the original set
 The world has moved on, and
 Our understanding of how Lean works has improved.

These areas of concern lead to a number of specific problems (see Table 1). The first problem
revolves around how Lean works in different industries and the fact that classic Lean texts tend,
explicitly or implicitly, to assume that we all work in high volume, repetitive manufacturing
environments such as car components or electronics industries.

There appears to be little allowance for people in low volume or more variable manufacturing
industries or the service sector.  What we have observed is that the further you take Lean from its car
making origins, the more strained some of the classic principles become.  For instance, in high variety
manufacturing or service industries many struggle with the concept of kanban style pull systems.  As
a result, organisations such as Flinders Medical, an Australian hospital, have redefined their own
principles including: Focus on the Patient, Understand our Processes, Social & Technical Flows,
Responsive Teams & Learn and Spread.

Table 1:  Problems with the Original Lean Principles
3
See: Peter Hines et al, Learning to Evolve: A Review of Contemporary Lean Thinking, International Journal of Operations &
Production Management, 24, 10, pp. 994‐1011, 2004
4
See: Peter Hines, Must Do Better: Applying Lean in the Public Sector, Public Sector Executive, Sept/Oct, pp. 34‐45, 2009
5
See: Peter Hines, Pauline Found, Gary Griffiths & Richard Harrison, Staying Lean: Thriving, Not Just Surviving, Lean
Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff, 2008

The next set of problems revolves around the fact that the original principles have been generally
interpreted at an operational level.  Many firms use Lean as a focus for point‐kaizen improvement
activities on the shop floor.  Indeed, almost all the organisations we meet tend to look at physical
flows only in the Order Fulfilment process (customer order to delivery of product or service).

As a result Lean is often used as a short term cost cutting or waste reduction mechanism.  Indeed,
many refer to Lean as a cost reduction toolkit, an initiative or a programme.  Even Womack & Jones
open their book with: “Muda. It’s the one word of Japanese you really must know…muda means
“waste””.  In contrast if you seek out the Toyota corporate website you will find that Taiichi Ohno has
a different perspective: “Eliminate muda, mura, muri….completely”6
.  What appears to be missing in
the Lean Thinking book is the focus on levelling and making life easy for people.

Linked to this waste reduction focus, is another significant gap, the lack of an appropriate focus on
quality and risk.  Fundamental to the creation of a complete Lean Business System7
is achieving what
the customer wants, when they want it.  This implies the pursuit of 100% quality as well as 100% on
time delivery.  It also implies that risk is at an absolute minimum.

Rarely do we see Lean applied within the context of the business needs, wider environmental or
social concerns, strategy formation or deployment.  It is usually a tactical activity run by full, or part
time, improvement agents.  This lack of senior management involvement means that there is rarely
appropriate senior level leadership and, as a result, insufficient attention to employee engagement.
The result of this is that the sustainability of change is poor.

The reason for this is that the classic Lean Principles almost totally missed the importance of people.
Specifically, little attention was drawn to the importance of communication, supportive human
resource policies, staff training and development.  In addition, inadequate attention was paid to the
importance of resourcing the change process and individual job design.  It is interesting to contrast
that with some key reasons why Lean transitions fail as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Reasons Why Lean Transitions Fail
Source: Lucey, Bateman & Hines, 2005

Finally, the classic Lean principles appear (or have been interpreted as being) too focused inside the
organisation.  As a result, few organisations outside of the automotive sector appear to take their
6
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/vision/traditions/jul_aug_04.html
7
For more details of the Lean Business System, please see the white paper Creating a Lean Business System at
http://www.sapartners.com/content/blogsection/6/87/lang,/

Lean activities into their supply chain.  The result is again often point‐kaizen activity where single
firms are the focus of improvement rather than the complete supply chain.

To summarise: the traditional Lean approach is too piecemeal, too short term in nature and with
little focus on the areas required to make it sustainable in most organisations. What is called for is a
more systemic approach.

Redefining the Lean Principles

Taking all these concerns and issues into account we have redefined the original principles into a new
holistic framework – the 8Ps of the Lean Business System.

This framework helps companies in any industry, and at any stage of Lean maturity, to reflect on how
they are deploying Lean in their business.  It helps to take the focus away from point‐kaizen activity
towards a more contingent approach, a more aligned approach, a more human approach and
ultimately, a more sustainable approach.  Indeed it is part of a move to Lean becoming a cultural
journey towards everyone in the organisation actively working towards a fully aligned ‘tomorrow
better than today’ system.

Figure 1: The 8Ps of the Lean Business System

We believe that this new 8Ps approach will also, at
least to some degree, overcome the shortcoming of
the classic Womack & Jones approach as shown in
Table 3. In the table the darker the shading, the
more impact the particular principle will have on
the existing problems.

Table 3: Countering Problems with the 8Ps of Lean Thinking

PURPOSE
PULL
PROCESS
PEOPLE
PLANET
PARTNERING
PERFECTION
PREVENTION
The 8Ps
of Lean Thinking
PURPOSE
PULL
PROCESS
PEOPLE
PLANET
PARTNERING
PERFECTION
PREVENTION
The 8Ps
of Lean Thinking


The 8 Principles of the Lean Business System – a detailed look

1. Purpose

Before starting any activity it is important to understand the purpose and to align the
organisation.  Ask yourself, how many people in organisations:

 Really understand what they are supposed to achieve?
 Feel they have an appropriate set of KPIs?
 Are working on too many things at once?
 Can point to how they are making tomorrow better than today?

So what do you need to take into account in developing a purpose?  Traditional management
has taught us to focus on the Voice of the Owner.  Traditional Lean Thinking has extending that
to include the Voice of the Customer (although we rarely find that this is the starting point for
a Lean transformation).  Even this dual focus is not enough, as we see in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Achieving an Effective and Sustainable Purpose

Focus on the Voice of the Owner and Voice of the Customer fails to focus on the muri ‐ the
frustrations and problems that individual people face in their work. It fails therefore to address
the “what’s in it for me?” objection to change.  It fails to focus adequately on the Voice of the
Employee.  This concern is key and we will return to it in the section on People.

As our collective thinking has moved on, we now need to focus also on the Voice of Society.
Specifically our role as corporate citizens and in particular the environmental impacts of our
activities.  We will again return to this area in the Planet section below.

Codifying the purpose is a key job of the senior management team.  It is a way of capturing the
WHAT, the direction, the focus and ideas about the destination. If done well it is also a
powerful tool in establishing the WHY.  Focusing on these two areas is not only essential, but it
will help senior managers start moving away from simply HOW based thinking. In my
experience, pre‐defined solutions from senior managers, often without much thinking about
Effective and
sustainable
purpose
Voice of the
Customer
Voice of the Owner
Voice of
Society
Voice of the Employee
Effective and
sustainable
purpose
Voice of the
Customer
Voice of the Owner
Voice of
Society
Voice of the Employee

WHAT and WHY, often have only a poor chance of being accepted by the business and an even
poorer chance of leading to sustainable change.

Not only do organisations need to have a purpose, they also need to communicate it in a way
that engages the workforce.  This almost certainly needs to be done in a visual way translating
the purpose into a language that is accessible to people at their level of the organisation.  It
needs to be more than mere visual displays used to impress visitors, but a living, breathing
management tool that is the focus of how the organisation is run.  It needs to be a complete
visual management approach.  An example from Cogent Power is depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Sales team visual management at
Cogent Power

The key elements required include:
 A purpose for the team
 A relevant set of KPIs
 A team‐selected (bottom‐up) set of
problem solving action plans
 A set of team‐selected celebrations of
success

Indeed in her work on sustainability, Nicola Bateman found that this type of deployed visual
management was one of the most important elements of achieving sustainable change8
.

2. Process

After nearly 20 years working with Lean I find that the majority of firms still only apply Lean in
one process: Order Fulfilment. Order Fulfilment starts with the customer’s need, is translated
into an information flow in the organisation and results in a reverse flow to the customer of
the end product or service.  This is the process that almost all organisations address in their
Lean journey, either in whole or in part ‐ 95% never get any further.  In addition these 95%
tend to be addressing cost reduction having done some Value Stream Mapping.

So why is this a problem? Mainly because they are only scratching the surface of what is
possible with a Lean Business System. Businesses have many processes that they need to
manage, and manage well – including ones that stretch across internal departments. In
general there are three types (see Figure 4):

 Directional Processes
 Core Processes and
 Enabling Processes

There is usually only one Directional Process in a business, often called strategic management
and it is often only in this process and at this level that a cross‐functional approach is taken.
There are usually 3‐6 Core Processes that deliver the main tangible outputs and outcomes for
the business. These might include Innovation, Order Creation and Order Fulfilment. In
addition to these there are 3‐6 Enabling Processes that support the Core Processes to deliver
the key business result.
8
See: Nicola Bateman, Sustainability: A Guide to Process Improvement, Lean Enterprise Research Centre, 2001


Figure 4:  Generic Process Framework

Each process has its own part to play, but it is the Core Processes that are likely to deliver on
the majority of the top level strategy and KPI set.  However, across different organisations, this
may be in radically different ways.

Improvements in the Order Fulfilment process are likely to deliver an increase in capacity in
order to achieve a cost benefit. Many businesses go wrong here, however, because they
assume that is the goal of Lean.  In many cases there is a dislocation between the business
strategy and this ‘Lean’ cost reduction.  Worse than this, many of the cost savings are often
illusory.  What for instance is the cost saving of merely freeing up 20% of a factory or office
block on its own?  There may be some, but it usually far from 20% of the total costs.

If we instead think of Lean more holistically, as an approach to deliver improved customer
service and waste reduction, then the outcome should be an increase in profitable growth9
.  In
other words lean should deliver an optimal balance between these two areas aligned to the
business goals and purpose.

However, how can organisations do this if they are usually only addressing one single process
whose improvement is likely to be largely about reducing cost?  The answer is, of course, that
they can’t, not unless they seek to improve a range of other processes such as Order Creation
and Innovation.  The improvement of these processes is less likely to be about reducing cost
and more about improving customer value. In other words they are about growing the
business or filling capacity.

I call this X and 2X thinking as this links to the profit potential of Lean in an organisation (see
Figure 5).  By creating capacity through the improvement of processes like Order Fulfilment a
business may achieve some cost reduction and hence deliver on some profit potential it may
have had.  However, it is only when this capacity is utilised when processes such as Innovation
and Order Creation are addressed that the full benefit will be reaped by the business.  In my
9
In a public sector environment this might be seen as improved value for money where value (in whatever terms) to
customers is improved and costs are reduced.
Strategic Management
Directional Process
Directional Process
Continuous
Improvement
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
People
Process
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
Environmental Systems Management
Enabling Process
Enabling Process
Innovation Process
Order Creation
Order Fulfilment
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes
Directional Process
Directional Process
Directional Process
Directional Process
Continuous
Improvement
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
People
Process
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
Enabling Process
Enabling Process
Continuous
Improvement
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
Continuous
Improvement
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
People
Process
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
People
Process
Enabling
process
Enabling
process
Enabling Process
Enabling Process
Enabling Process
Enabling Process
Innovation Process
Order Creation
Order Fulfilment
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes
Innovation Process
Order Creation
Order Fulfilment
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes
Core Processes

experience the profit potential benefit of filling this capacity is never less than twice as large as
the benefit in creating the capacity.  In some cases the ratio can be as much as X to 10X.

Figure 5: X and 2X Thinking

3. People

The area of people is misunderstood by many organisations applying Lean. One of my
reflections on re‐reading Womack & Jones’s Lean Thinking is that the key issue in the success
of the case study firms was not the tools, shop floor improvements or kaikaku events.  It was
in the leadership of the senior executives.  This reflection has been borne out many times in
the times that I and my colleagues have witnessed effective and sustainable change.

Linked to leadership is the ability to engage people in the business.  Toyota talk about Respect
for People.  This means allowing the people who know the work best – the people who do the
work – to work out HOW we are going to improve. Developing a culture of Continuous
Improvement is not sufficient without this fundamental respect for people (figure 6)10
.

Figure 6: Continuous Improvement and Respect for People

The People principle is without doubt fundamental to the success and sustainability of any
Lean transformation.  I will highlight 8 areas that need to be addressed.

i. Understanding the difference between management and leadership
In general much of our career progression, HR policies and education system are designed to
create high quality managers. This is essential to deliver today’s results and keep organisations
10
See: Jeffrey Liker, The Toyota Way, McGrawHill, New York, 2004
Profit
Potential
£
Time
Classic Lean
Capacity Creation
In Order Fulfilment
= Cost Saving
Lean Enterprise
Fill Capacity
In e.g. Order Creation
= Wider Margins
= Increased Turnover
X
2X
Profit
Potential
£
Time
Classic Lean
Capacity Creation
In Order Fulfilment
= Cost Saving
Classic Lean
Capacity Creation
In Order Fulfilment
= Cost Saving
Lean Enterprise
Fill Capacity
= Wider Margins
Lean Enterprise
Fill Capacity
= Wider Margins
X
X
2X
2X

working.  However, it is insufficient to create an effective tomorrow.  It is not sufficient as
Bennis shows (Table 4) to innovate, develop, inspire or challenge existing businesses. We need
to manage and lead.

Table 4: The Roles of the Manager & Leader
Source: Bennis 2003

This dual role has most effectively been translated by Honda who use the concept of Futatsue
Shigoto or ‘two jobs’.  By this they talk about Today's Job (managing what I need to do now to
be successful) and Tomorrow's Job (leading in terms of what I need to do to be successful in
the future).  Honda emphasises that each one of them is equally important.

ii. Creating and deploying an inspiring vision
Part of the leadership role is to inspire people to want to change.  It is about creating a vision,
a direction, something for everyone to be inspired by.  This can either be the avoidance of
something bad, the ‘burning platform’, or better still a destination people want to achieve.  In
the publication Staying Lean: Thriving not just Surviving (2008) we describe how Cogent
Power’s CEO, Marcel Schabos created just such an inspiring vision by re‐igniting a pride in the
business right across the workforce.

iii. Defining, demonstrating and encouraging correct behaviours
The third area is about creating a culture where an appropriate behaviour set is instilled right
across the business. The starting point is to establish which behaviours are appropriate,
ensure they are ‘lived’ and demonstrated by the senior team and then find mechanisms to do
this across the workforce.  At Cogent, the HR Director, Peter Rose used Doug Howardell’s 7
Lean Skills to achieve this11
.

These involve:
 Customer consciousness
 Enterprise thinking
 Adaptation
 Taking initiative
 Innovation
 Collaboration
 Influence

11
See http://www.theacagroup.com/leanarticle.htm

iv. Aligning support policies and procedures with purpose
When trying to implement a Lean approach it is necessary to ensure that the various
supporting structures are aligned to the purpose.  We have already talked about the right KPIs
and their deployment.  Equally important is the alignment of HR and accounting policies and
procedures.  As shown in Figure 7 below, this is necessary as these policies and procedures
underpin the required workforce characteristics which in themselves underpin the commercial
and cultural outcomes of a lean programme.

The most important of these HR policies and procedures is how people’s performance is
managed, their reward and recognition defined, their training and development undertaken
and their succession planning run.  We will return to the training and development area in the
next section on Pull.

Figure 7: Aligning HR Policies

To illustrate the other areas, let’s follow Cogent Power’s use of the 7 Lean Skills.  These were
applied to the annual performance review.  Each manager had one‐to‐one discussions with
employee about how they had exhibited these skills. Decisions on reward, recognition and
promotion were equally weighted. As a result people were promoted who had the right
attitudes, not just firefighting skills.

v. Creating a dynamic communication system
In my experience the best performing organisations have the best communications systems,
using a variety of methods to mirror different preferences that people have for absorbing
information and providing feedback. What is important is that the communications are
simple, well thought through, in a language and medium that are likely to be understood and
are two‐way.

I have often found that the use of visual cues with appropriate data works well as we saw in
the yellow boards in Figure 3.  As Cogent Power’s CEO, Marcel Schabos, once said to me when
reflecting on the reasons for their success, “it was all about three things: communication,
communication and communication”.

Measuring and
Managing Key
Workforce
Characteristics
Designing
and
Implementing
HR Policies
Procedures
Workforce
Engagement
Workforce
Skills
Workforce
Continuity
Performance
Management
Reward and
Recognition
Training and
Development
Career
Management
and Succession
Interpreting
Strategic
Purpose
Commercial
Performance
Outcomes
Continuous
Improvement
and change
outcomes
Measuring and
Managing Key
Workforce
Characteristics
Designing
and
Implementing
HR Policies
Procedures
Workforce
Engagement
Workforce
Skills
Workforce
Continuity
Performance
Management
Reward and
Recognition
Training and
Development
Career
Management
and Succession
Interpreting
Strategic
Purpose
Commercial
Performance
Outcomes
Continuous
Improvement
and change
outcomes

vi. Developing Situational Leadership
Another important area within the People principle is adopting the appropriate leadership
style at each stage of a Lean transformation. As we describe in detail in Staying Lean a
business goes through a journey when applying Lean.  This usually starts with a rather ad hoc
or reactive management system and progresses over time to an autonomous ‘way of life’ style
where there is no longer a need to give the work a title such as Lean or Continuous
Improvement.

At each stage of the journey a different leadership style is required (figure 8). Near the
beginning a championing or driving approach is required.  This involves senior managers and
lean coaches getting things going, making projects work and getting early results.  Later on the
journey a more supportive or mentoring style is required to support the line in their lean
journey.  We will return to this change in style in the Pull section below.

Figure 8: Situational Leadership in a Lean Journey

vii. Working on Job Design
In order to move the focus away from just doing the day job to thinking about creating a better
tomorrow, it is also necessary to consider job design at all levels of the organisation.  Consider
the typical split of working time for executives, middle managers and operatives as shown in
Figure 9.

Figure 9: Typical Current State Job Design

Adhoc
Reactive
Early Stages
Autonomous
CI way of life
Mature Stages
DRIVER
FACILITATOR
SUPPORTER
MENTOR
Stage of Maturity
Role of Leaders
JOURNEY / TIME
CHAMPION
Adhoc
Reactive
Early Stages
Autonomous
CI way of life
Mature Stages
DRIVER
FACILITATOR
SUPPORTER
MENTOR
Stage of Maturity
Role of Leaders
Stage of Maturity
Role of Leaders
JOURNEY / TIME
CHAMPION
Executives Middle Managers Operatives
Strategic
Improvement
Day Job
Fire Fighting
Time
Strategic
Improvement
Day Job
Fire Fighting
Time

What you typically find is that executives spend some time working on strategy, although
frequently too much on big bang top‐down HOW‐focused programmes that are then handed
to middle managers to implement.  This means they need to engage operatives.  However, the
operatives’ line managers are often reluctant to free them up as they do not want to see time
wasted on what they perceive to be ‘non productive’ activity.

The result of this is that the day job predominates at these levels.  However, it also means that
any change that is undertaken is likely to be quick‐hit with only a low chance of being
sustained. As a consequence fundamental problems and weaknesses don’t get properly
addressed and much of the executive and middle manager time gets taken up in firefighting.
Does this sound familiar?

In contrast, we could envisage an ideal state (figure 10) where everyone in the business spends
some time working on strategy. This is not to say that everyone will work on high level
strategy, but more on strategy as it affects them.  In other words, within their environment,
how can they make tomorrow better than today to achieve their part of the purpose? To make
these improvements they will also need a formal time budget to achieve these gains.  Even at
operative levels these two elements may be as much as 15% of their working time.  However,
only by making this investment will the day job be improved and a continuous improvement
mentality established.

Figure 10: Ideal State Job Design

Clearly here we are looking at an ideal state that might take many years to achieve.  Hence
each business will need to define its own future states over successive Lean roadmaps towards
this ideal state.

viii. Leading by not leading
The last area is leading by not leading, a paradox for the senior team. This relates to the
activities of the executives in figure 10 within the improvement segment. Let’s say that a
business invests 10% of the formal time of all its employees on improvement.  Within this, the
senior team should minimise the amount of time they spend on big‐bang top down (often
disengaging) initiatives and maximise the amount of time they invest in small, local bottom up
projects.

Strategic
Improvement
Day Job
Time
Strategic
Improvement
Day Job
Time

An example may be a plant or office manager spending 2‐3 days a month taking part in local
projects.  The trick is not to lead the projects, nor facilitate them, nor manage them.  It is to
just be a team member asking permission of the team to just take part and offer outside‐the‐
box suggestions, as they are the least likely person in the team to understand the work in
detail.  This ‘not leading’ approach however shows a great deal of leadership and is likely to
inspire many across the business to want to improve as they see just how seriously Lean is
being taken by the executive team. This may sound strange, but if applied well, certainly
works.

4. Pull

There are three main areas of pull that are necessary to consider within a Lean Business
System. These will be discussed in turn:

i. Pull‐Based Delivery
Within the traditional Lean approach airtime is rightly given to the creation of flow and pull12
.
One of the problems here is that much of the Lean literature tends to be written by, or for,
people working in a high volume manufacturing environment where demand variability is low.
Example of this might include the car or electronics industry.  People who do not work in these
environments can find the concept of pull difficult to interpret and apply, a prime example
being the office environment.

Hence, it is my belief that although pull‐based delivery is desirable, in many cases it is hard, if
not impossible to achieve.  In addition, in a transition to a full Lean approach, it may not be the
first and most important focus for activity. I have seen too many manufacturing firms
attempting to create a pull system in an unstable process environment leading to disaster.  We
will return to this area in the Prevention section below.

So why might pull be hard or impossible to achieve? Consider figure 11.  In some industries the
quantity of product or service is very high and the variability of demand very low.  Typical of
this might be industries producing components or products for mass markets such as bread,
toothpaste or milk.  We call such cases Runner products.

In other extreme cases we might find that volumes are very low and orders highly variable.
Industries such parts for classic cars or the space industry may be regarding as producing
Stranger products.

Figure 11: Runner, Repeater & Stranger Products
12
See for instance: James Womack & Daniel Jones, Lean Thinking, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996


In between these extremes a range of products or services with intermediary levels of demand
and variability may be regarded as Repeater products.  The majority of Lean literature assumes
we all live and work in a ‘runner’ world where well constructed kanban‐based pull systems can
operate.  Clearly this is not true.

Ideally the first job in a Lean environment is to understand the customer and their pull‐based
demands.  Before even doing this it might be useful to differentiate between real demand and
created demand13
.  Consider, for instance buying a car.  On entering the dealer you see the car
you want but the showroom model is red instead of blue.  You enquire about getting a blue
one and are quoted a 6 week lead time.  As an alternative you are offered the red car with a
10% discount. You decide to buy the red car.  Is this real demand or created demand?

In most companies this would be treated as real demand and hence under a kanban system,
particularly if replicated many times, could lead to major distortions of supply.  In fact, we
would be dealing with a distorted demand rather than the true Voice of the Customer.  So the
first step might be differentiating between real demand and the created demand resulting
from a failure of the system.

The second task might then be to try to find ways to reduce the variability of demand (for
instance by reducing the lead time) or increasing the effective volume of demand (for instance
by standardising or modularising different offerings).  This is illustrated by the arrows in figure
11.  The third task would then be to establish the appropriate type of supply system for the
resulting product or service.  Here a kanban‐based pull system might be most appropriate for a
runner and a make‐to‐order flow system for a repeater.  However, in the rare occasions where
it is not possible to move the product or service out of the stranger zone it may still be
necessary to operate under push based conditions.

ii. Pull‐Based Improvement
In far too many organisations that I visit I cannot find a link between the improvement activity
that is going on and the needs of the business, the customers, the employees or wider society.
In many cases what is improved seem to be more a whim of a particular, usually senior level,
person.  Indeed, when I look in detail at the programme of improvement set out by many firms
I can see little or no link to their professed strategy.  The question is, are we solving the right
problems? If not, it seems almost inevitable that even a well delivered improvement
programme will be ultimately considered to be a failure.

I also observe in many organisations that projects or programmes are conceived by senior
management and, as we saw within the People principle area, are then imposed on local
people by full time change agents.  If this situation is particularly severe or continues for a
protracted time I hear complaints from people lower down in the organisational structure that
they have been ‘Leaned’.  This push based mentality rarely has little to do with the needs of
the business, customer, (local) employees or society.  It is more often driven by flawed metrics
such the need for so‐many kaizen events or black belt projects in a given time period.  This
piecemeal approach is likely to lead to disengagement, frustration and poor sustainability.
Unfortunately I find these symptoms far too often within organisations employing push‐based
improvement.

13
See Peter Hines, Riccardo Silvi & Monica Bartolini, Lean Profit Potential, Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff, 2002

To create an effective Lean Business System, it is necessary to move as quickly as possible to a
pull‐based improvement system. This does not necessarily mean immediately, as the speed
and priority of moving quickly to a pull‐based approach will vary depending on the business
situation, the Lean maturity of the business and the competing needs for rapid development of
other areas of the Lean Business System (see the section on Perfection below).  However, in
general, I would say the transition should at least start within the first two years of any
transformation.

So what are the key ingredients of a pull‐based improvement system?

First, there needs to be absolute clarity on what the business is trying to achieve (including a
focus on the customer, employees and society). Second, this WHAT needs to be communicated
in a highly effective way so that everyone in the organisation can understand what the
business is trying to achieve, what this means to them and their team (including their
contribution to it) and an effective, aligned and engaging set of KPIs. Third, and perhaps most
crucial, is that the problems being solved and projects to be worked on have been selected by
the team at that level.  In other words that the ownership resides locally pulled by the local
needs for improvement rather than pushed by a senior management group who might be
quite remote from the workplace.

An example of such an approach can be seen in Figure 3.

iii. Pull‐Based Training
Closely linked to pull‐based improvement is the concept of pull‐based training.  This contrasts
with the classic push‐based training seen far too frequently in business.  Within push‐based
training the topics, duration and timing of courses are pushed by the needs of some senior
management group, typically the training manager.

In contrast, within a pull‐based approach, training is undertaken according to the needs of the
local team and is decided by consultation of the team leader (at whichever) level and the
individual.  It is based on a skills and competency needs that the team have in order to make
their contribution to the success of the business.

It is hence impossible to have pulled‐based training unless pull‐based improvement is in place.
The first time I observed this element of the Lean Business System was when working with the
Toyota supply chain in Japan14
. When I benchmarked their performance against a similar
supply chain in Europe I found that the gaps were enormous. One surprise was the fact that
the employees in the Japanese firms spent on average only half the amount of hours doing
training but clearly hugely outperformed their western counterparts in terms of results.

The reason for this was two‐fold.  First, the Toyota suppliers in Japan were operating a pull‐
based training approach and second 90% of their training was On‐The‐Job (or as they called it
OJT) rather than less than the 10% more typical in the west.

14
Peter Hines, Benchmarking Toyota’s Supply Chain: Japan vs U.K., Long Range Planning, February, Volume 31, Number 6,
pp. 911‐918, 1998, ISSN 0024‐6301

5.   Prevention

One of the most serious errors I see in the use of Lean is an excessive focus on tools and
techniques.  Not only this, but in many cases this focus is highly skewed towards a few tools.
Among the ones I most frequently encounter are:

 Big Picture Mapping (as popularised by Rother & Shook15
under the term Value Stream
Mapping)
 5S
 Kanban &
 Quick Changeovers (SMED)

These are all good tools.  However, they are often applied in a slavish, A before B before C,
approach.  Worse still, little allowance is made to whether they are the right tools or other
more appropriate tools are required.

The most serious omission is usually tools within what in Figure 12 are described as the
Standardised and Stable Process & Quality boxes. These tools are focused on preventing
variation, problems and subsequent rework or quality failures for the customer.

Figure 12: Working on Prevention within the Tool House of Lean

The result is that organisations are trying to improve the flow of an unstable system.  This is
very unlikely to work.  This failure within the traditional Lean approach (as applied by many)
has led more enlightened organisations to try to fill the gap by collecting a series of tools to
address the problem.  The most prominent of these are the Six Sigma tools first collated by
Motorola in the 1980s.  Although this was a good reaction to the problem they saw in many
limited lean organisations, their mistake was to then not employ the other tools that were
being used.  Hence, there became an imbalance with an over focus on the Quality pillar side of
the true Lean Business System.

15
Mike Rother & John Shook, Learning to See, The Lean Enterprise Institute, Brookline, 1998

What is required is a balance of tools from the Tool House of Lean.  This balance should be
pulled by the needs for local improvement where there is a “daily habit” of continuous
improvement that uses simple, visual technologies, tools and techniques that have been
chosen and adapted for effective use. Hence, the specific tools to be used should be
contingently selected according to specific needs.

6.   Partnering

No company or organisation is an island and to create a world class organisation usually
requires the creation of a world class supply chain. Indeed, the leading practitioners of Lean
worldwide such as Toyota and Tesco have also heavily focused on creating a high performing
supply chain.

Indeed, when I compared the relative performance of Toyota’s Japanese supply chain with a
comparative one in the UK I found that the management of the supply chain was Toyota’s key
competitive advantage16
.  As can be seen in Table 5, based on comparative productivity figures
for the whole supply chain, the major competitive advantage did not lie at the car producer
but more at the 1st
and 2nd
tier suppliers.

Table 5: The Competitive Gap When Partnering

The question is, why? After three months of extensive research I discovered that the reason
was that Toyota invested a huge amount of effort into partnering with their suppliers.  In doing
so they made dramatic improvements to their performance.  Not only that, but Toyota had
also taught their suppliers how to do the same using an approach they call Kyoryoku Kai or
Supplier Association17
.

Unfortunately, although this inter‐company development and coordination is at the heart of a
true Lean Business System there are few companies in the West outside of the automotive
industry that have got anywhere near achieving the type of results we see from Toyota in
Japan.  One of the main reasons is that insufficient focus has been given to the Partnering
Principle in traditional Lean businesses.

16
Peter Hines, Benchmarking Toyota’s Supply Chain: Japan vs U.K., Long Range Planning, February, Volume 31, Number 6,
pp. 911‐918, 1998, ISSN 0024‐6301
17
See Peter Hines, Creating World Class Suppliers, Pitman, London, 1994

7.   Planet

It was just after the turn of the millennium that Jim Womack wrote:

“Lean thinking must be “green” because it reduces the amount of energy and wasted by‐
products required to produce a given product…Indeed, examples are often cited of reducing
human effort, space, and scrap by 50 percent or more, per product produced, through applying
lean principles in an organisation….this means that…lean’s role is to be green’s critical enabler
as the massive waste in our current practices is reduce”.

However, apart from a strong movement in the west coast of the United States, progress
seems to have been slow on adopting the Planet as part of a wider set of Lean Business System
Principles. This is in spite of the relentless march of Lean across industry sectors and the
heightened awareness of the environment.

Figure 13: A Balanced Approach

One of the first to put the green agenda on the
map was the then Norwegian Prime Minister, Dr
Gro Harlem Bruntland when she introduced the
concept of sustainable development, describing
it as being made up of three areas: economic,
social and environmental sustainability.

For a company we might translate this as a focus
on a ‘respect for profit’ (economic), ‘respect for
people’ (social) and ‘respect for environment’ (environmental).  To think in very simple terms:

 A traditional Lean approach might be described as understanding customer’s needs and
values and then reviewing the system and processes that produces them so that the
traditional eight wastes can be minimised

 Green might be described as understanding society’s needs and values and then
reviewing the system and processes that delivers them so that the eight environmental
wastes can be minimised

Figure 14: Lean and Green

Respect for Profit
Respect for People Respect for Environment
Balance
Zone
Respect for Profit
Respect for People Respect for Environment
Balance
Zone
Balance
Zone
Waste
(Muda)
Non value adding to the
product or service in the
eyes of the customer
Over
Production
Lost People
Potential
Waiting
Transporting
Inappropriate
Processing
Unnecessary
Inventory
Unnecessary
Motion
Defects
Waste
(Muda)
Over
Production
Lost People
Potential
Waiting
Transporting
Inappropriate
Processing
Unnecessary
Inventory
Unnecessary
Motion
Defects
Lean
Green Waste
(Muda)
Destruction of our
environment in the eyes
of society
Greenhouse
Gases
Poor Health &
Safety
Rubbish
Pollution
Excessive
Power Usage
Excessive
Water Usage
Excessive
Resource
Usage
Eutrophication
Waste
(Muda)
Destruction of our
of society
Greenhouse
Gases
Poor Health &
Safety
Rubbish
Pollution
Excessive
Power Usage
Excessive
Water Usage
Excessive
Resource
Usage
Eutrophication
Waste
(Muda)
Over
Production
Lost People
Potential
Waiting
Transporting
Inappropriate
Processing
Unnecessary
Inventory
Unnecessary
Motion
Defects
Waste
(Muda)
Over
Production
Lost People
Potential
Waiting
Transporting
Inappropriate
Processing
Unnecessary
Inventory
Unnecessary
Motion
Defects
Lean
Green
Green Waste
(Muda)
Destruction of our
of society
Greenhouse
Gases
Poor Health &
Safety
Rubbish
Pollution
Excessive
Power Usage
Excessive
Water Usage
Excessive
Resource
Usage
Eutrophication
Waste
(Muda)
Destruction of our
of society
Greenhouse
Gases
Poor Health &
Safety
Rubbish
Pollution
Excessive
Power Usage
Excessive
Water Usage
Excessive
Resource
Usage
Eutrophication

So what is the difference? Well apart from the fact that individual customers are multiplied to
become society and the environmental wastes have a slightly different character than the
traditional lean wastes, not a lot.

What is necessary is to include a set of diagnostic mapping tools and implementation tools
that addresses the wider Planet issues and the Voice of Society. In other words, as seen in
Figure 15 an extra Environmental pillar has been added to the traditional Lean House.



Figure 15: Planet focus in the Lean Tool House

8. Perfection

Perfection has been the ‘holy grail’ for Lean businesses since Womack and Jones encapsulated
this principle in the mid 1990s.  This focus was the result of a revision in thinking after a great
deal of benchmarking work.  The 1990s automotive research work showed us that there were
huge gaps between the best and other companies. The gap, as we have seen above, was often
between Toyota (or its supply chain) and western equivalents.

This benchmarking gave many western companies a wake up call.  However, it had two major
problems in terms of energising organisations. First, partly because the gaps were so big,
many organisations, particularly outside of the automotive sector, found it hard to accept the
data. This led to reasons for inaction such as “they have a different culture, “it is a different
industry” and “we are different”.

Second, even those who were compelled by the data, lacked a roadmap of how to move
forward.  As a result many organisations, often guided by external consultants, simply followed
the quick fix kaizen blitz route leading in many cases to a poorly sustained short‐term Lean
initiative.

To counter this piecemeal approach, we believe that organisations should create their own
Lean Business System.  This requires them to develop a vision of their specific perfection and
their own bespoke roadmap on how to move towards it.  But how?

Simply put, the process is similar to best practice Value Stream Mapping, except here we are
working at the business, rather than the Value Stream or process level.  As seen in Figure 16
you start with establishing the Current State for the business. You then envision Perfection, or
the Ideal State (or what you think is the best possible position you could possibly reach).  You

then back off from this to a point that your team believe is feasible in the long term.  This
Feasible Future State might be 3 to 5 years away.

Figure 16: Moving Towards Perfection

The next step is then to create a realistic point that can be reached within a sensible engaging
timescale (usually around 18 months).  This is the Targeted Future State that then requires a
Roadmap.  Once this Targeted Future State position is achieved, a further Roadmap towards
the Ideal State may then be created and deployed.

To help, we have developed the Lean Business Model® (Figure 17) which not only provides a
framework for an organisation’s particular Lean Business System but also an associated
diagnostic tool that helps the organisation to see where they are in a journey and which
interventions should be done early and which done later.

Figure 17: The Lean Business Model®

Think of the 5 elements of the model as 5 pieces of a
jigsaw. The benefit of getting all of the pieces in the
right place at the right time is that you are able to
see the whole picture. The same is true of the Lean
Business Model®. Over the course of a transition to
develop a Lean Business System, organisations must
systematically complete the whole of the jigsaw to
get all of the benefit from their investment.

To start creating the Lean Business System18
it is
necessary to follow the steps described above
(Figure 16) for each element of the Lean Business
Model®. It is not just about taking each element a bit further in each Roadmap, but about
making discriminating choices of what to do at what point in time. Indeed, the more difficult
choice is what not to do in the first Roadmap, as trying to do everything at once will lead to
delays, frustration and poor sustainability.
18
For more details of the Lean Business System, please see the white paper Creating a Lean Business System at
http://www.sapartners.com/content/blogsection/6/87/lang,/

The Measurement System (Figure 18) associated with this is based on the academically proven
Five Key Milestones of Continuous Improvement Maturity from “ad‐hoc” through to “way of
life”. Each of the core elements of the Lean Business Model® is assessed not only from a
quantitative viewpoint of ‐ systems and procedures ‐ but also from a qualitative viewpoint of ‐
values and behaviours.

Figure 18: Stages of Lean Maturity

In other words we need to measure not just what you do but also (and more importantly) the
way that you do it. This helps to build a learning organisation that not only has the capability to
maintain the gains of the improvement but is also self‐propelled continuously to improve the
continuous improvement process until it becomes a daily habit for everyone.

Figure 19: The Road to Perfection

Stage 1
Reactive
1 Reactive Approach
2 Little/No involvement
3 Adhoc Learning
Stage 2
Formal
Stage 4
Autonomous
Stage 3
Deployed
1 Formal Structure
2 Only Specialists
3 Team Learning
The Milestones of
LEAN MATURITY
Stage 5
Way 0f Life
Key Characteristics
1. Ways of Working
2. Associate Autonomy
3. Best Practice
1 Autonomous Habit
2 Full Empowerment
3 External Learning
1 Driven Deployment
2 Majority Involvement
3 X-Process learning
1 Goal Orientated
2 Selected Teams
3 Value Stream Learning
Stage 1
Reactive
1 Reactive Approach
2 Little/No involvement
3 Adhoc Learning
Stage 2
Formal
Stage 4
Autonomous
Stage 3
Deployed
1 Formal Structure
2 Only Specialists
3 Team Learning
The Milestones of
LEAN MATURITY
Stage 5
Way 0f Life
Key Characteristics
1. Ways of Working
2. Associate Autonomy
3. Best Practice
1 Autonomous Habit
2 Full Empowerment
3 External Learning
1 Driven Deployment
2 Majority Involvement
3 X-Process learning
1 Goal Orientated
2 Selected Teams
3 Value Stream Learning

Summary & Conclusions

In this white paper I have sought to reflect on the state of Lean as it is today, through the lens of the
traditional Lean Principles. These reflections have led me to conclude that some updating is
necessary if organisations are to get further than the often tool‐based approach that I see.

I believe that the journey and the newly modified set of Principles I describe here are an essential
part in creating for each organisation their own unique Lean Business System.  Such a system can be
used to create an holistic, integrated and engaging journey that will lead to sustainable long‐term
success.  I wish you good fortune on your own particular journey.

References

Nicola Bateman, Sustainability: A Guide to Process Improvement,
http://www.leanenterprise.org.uk/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,31/Itemid,68

Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, 2003

Peter Hines, Creating World Class Suppliers, Pitman, London, 1994

Peter Hines, Benchmarking Toyota’s Supply Chain: Japan vs U.K., Long Range Planning, February,
Volume 31, Number 6, pp. 911‐918, 1998, ISSN 0024‐6301

Peter Hines, Must Do Better: Applying Lean in the Public Sector, Public Sector Executive, Sept/Oct,
pp. 34‐45, 2009

Peter Hines, Pauline Found, Gary Griffiths & Richard Harrison, Staying Lean: Thriving, Not Just
Surviving, Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff, 2008, http://www.sapartners.com/ [register on
the site to download]

Peter Hines, Matthias Holweg & Nick Rich, Learning to Evolve: A Review of Contemporary Lean
Thinking, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 24, 10, pp. 994‐1011, 2004

See Peter Hines, Riccardo Silvi & Monica Bartolini, Lean Profit Potential, Lean Enterprise Research
Centre, Cardiff, 2002

Doug Howardell, Seven Lean Skills,  http://www.theacagroup.com/leanarticle.htm

Jeffrey Liker, The Toyota Way, McGrawHill, New York, 2004

John Lucey, Nicola Bateman & Peter Hines, Why Major Lean Transformations Have Not Been
Sustained, Management Services: Journal of the Institute of Management Services, 49, 2, pp. 9‐13,
2005

Taiichi Ohno, As quoted on the Toyota Corporate Website,
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/vision/traditions/jul_aug_04.html

Mike Rother & John Shook, Learning to See, The Lean Enterprise Institute, Brookline, 1998

James Womack & Daniel Jones, Lean Thinking, Simon &Schuster, New York, 1996

Further Information

Relevant Linked In Groups led by Professor Peter Hines:

Lean Business System
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1801885

Lean Business System Asia Pacific

Lean Business System Benelux

Lean Business System Canada

Lean Business System Central & Eastern Europe

Lean Business System Food & Drink

Lean Business System Ireland

Lean Business System Mediterranean

Lean Business System Nordic

Lean Business System Retail

Lean & Green

Contact Information for Professor Peter Hines

Email: peter.hines@sapartners.co.uk
Mobile: +44 (0)7778 840979
Web: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/professorpeterhines
S A Partners: www.sapartners.com

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