The Lean Book of Lean

“Core Lean Principles”

Your most important Lean manufacturing objective is to achieve more with less by following these “principles”:

• “Be customer demand-driven” – Do only those things your customers want.
• “Maximize flow” – Finish everything you start and avoid holdups.
• “Eliminate waste” – Identify overage in “materials, time and resources”; eliminate it.
• “Declare war on variation” – Allowing variability creates unnecessary uncertainty. Find the cause of variation and get rid of it.
• “Organize people around outcomes” – Make your colleagues accountable for delivering customer demand-driven products or services, and create an organizational structure that supports your mission.
• “Equip people” with necessary skills – Establish and maintain skills training as a foundation for organizational development.
• Implement “simple measures and controls” – Things happen fast in Lean environments, so install “warning indicators” at “critical points” before something fails.