What is lean management?

LEAN MANAGEMENT
Basic Concepts - Pipefy Communication

Table of Contents:
1. Lean Management
2. What is Lean Management?
3. Who can use Lean Management?
4. Lean Management’s Principles
5. Manage your tasks with Kanban

Lean Management:
We can start this presentation by stating that lean
management is not a defined set of principles that can be
neatly arranged in topics: lean preaches continuous
improvement, motion, not static.
As its principles define, it’s constantly moving and
evolving – and so should you.

What is Lean Management?
Lean management is a general approach to running an
organization in a way that supports the principle of
continuous improvement: seeking to achieve small,
incremental changes with the goal of improving efficiency
and quality in your processes without huge impact on the
environment and everyone involved.

Eliminate waste:
By identifying and tracking all the steps in your business
processes, this management style seeks to eliminate all
types of waste – time, effort or money you’re wasting.
Your main goal should be to establish an workflow that
works well without interruptions, material/resources
accumulating without being used, the need to repeat
steps, etc.

Who can use Lean Management?
Lean's roots go way back in manufacturing – read about
Toyota Production System to learn more – but it can be
applied to any industry or service company with the
single goal of optimising processes and eliminating all of
the steps that don’t generate value.

Be a part of the process:
Challenge your employees to innovate and suggest ways of
eliminating unnecessary steps – involving your team
members in strategical improvement decisions is key
since they’re the ones actually using the processes you wish
to improve.
If you ask people to think and give you ideas other than
just imposing your own improvement ideas, you’ll be
stimulating them to think and making them feel like they
are truly part of the process.

Practice what you preach:
This improvement model of asking those who actually do
the job to think, experiment and learn from the results is
what’s proposed by lean management.
It’s a participative other than detached management
approach: it humbly observes, challenges, encourages
and learns other than arrogantly bossing employees
around. It’s the ultimate “practice what you preach”
philosophy.

Learn and improve:
Lean management is a process of constant learning and
improvement from the obtained data.
It can’t be defined as a still or ﬁxed concept – you can’t
just copy what this or that company did and worked for
them, mainly because, as people have their particularities
and are unique, so are companies and their processes.
You’ll be more accurate defining lean management as a
philosophy – a way of thinking – other than just a method
or a technique.

Lean Management’s principles:
We’ve already pointed out the need of optimising
towards generating more value - so it’s important that
you’re aware of Lean’s definition of value.
It’s based on the customer’s point of view, not the
company’s owner or board of directors or anyone else’s.
Through this point of view, value is anything that will
stimulate the purchase of your product or, even more
directly, make the customer want to give you money for
what you offer.

Process Optimization:
In order to properly optimise your processes, you’ll first
need to map them, identifying all the steps you take – from
the beginning to the end – so that later on you’re able to
cut off those that are only generating cost without adding
to the customer’s value perception.
All the steps that do generate value should also be
optimised in order to eliminate all the possibilities of waste.
Lean is all about the application of the known and effective
scientific method of experimentation and study of work
processes and systems to find improvements.

Continuous Improvement:
Lean management’s philosophy is based on a culture of
continuous, incremental improvement that’s practiced by
every employee and team, at every organization level.
It’s not something defined by high management and
shoved down everyone else’s throats. Lean’s philosophy
encompasses a lot more than just processes, it’s about the
respect for people, for everyone’s voice in the processes –
the customer’s, the employees, the people who actually get
the job done.

Continuous Improvement:
It’s important you keep in mind that these principles are
cyclical and should be continuously repeated in the
search of better processes each time – you customer’s
perception of value is not static and neither should you, as
they evolve, you have to evolve to if you don’t want to be
left behind.

Lean Management Tools:
There are a lot of tools that can help with the technical
aspects of the continuous improvement process, such as
Poka-Yoke, Kanban, continuous flow, etc.
Lean management is not just social or just technical: it’s a
global philosophy that searches continuous improvement
while changing people’s perceptions of their organisation
and systems.

Manage your tasks with Kanban!
Pipefy’s Team Task Management Template was specially
developed to help you manage your team’s tasks without
breaking a sweat.
This template shows you in an organised and simpliﬁed
manner what everyone is currently doing, what they have
to do, and what is already done. It also highlights what are
the priorities, what’s on time, what’s late and what’s
potentially creating bottlenecks.

Start managing your processes on Pipefy!
Enjoy the 30-day free trial and leave mistakes in the past.
get started for free

What is lean management?

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