The Levels of Lean

It’s a common belief that Lean is about eliminating waste. Actually, Lean is more about learning how to improve our workflow. Lean provides its own management philosophy as well - a focus on the environment people find themselves in. Management’s role mirrors Deming’s belief that management’s job is to create excellent environments for people. Lean is a combination of:

• learning
• a focus on creating customer value
• “just-in-time” meaning to eliminate delays between steps
• managing work in process by using pull methods - that is, instead of planning ahead people pull work when they are ready for the next item
• “stop-the-line” or “build quality in” meaning that when errors are found we not only fix them then and there, but we look for what in the system caused them and fix that.

The best book to be introduced to Lean is Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones.?

Lean has many practices that you can take an apply and get improvements. These include:

• managing work in process (“just in time”)
• focus on quality (“build quality in”)
• have a focus on finishing

But merely putting Lean practices into an Agile approach makes that approach no more lean that putting a Daily Scrum into a waterfall process would make it Scrum.

This is an incredibly shallow view of what Lean is. Lean is not about practices. It is much deeper than that.

This chapter introduces Lean at five different levels of understanding.

1. Lean from a practice point of view
2. Lean from manufacturing - eliminate waste
3. Lean as a systems thinking approach
4. Lean as a management approach
5. Lean as a continuous education approach

Lean From a Practice Point of View

Lean has many practices that you can take an apply and get improvements. These include:

• managing work in process (“just in time”)
• focus on quality (“build quality in”)
• have a focus on finishing

But merely putting Lean practices into an Agile approach makes that approach no more lean that putting a Daily Scrum into a waterfall process would make it Scrum.

This is an incredibly shallow view of what Lean is. Lean is not about practices. It is much deeper than that.

Lean from manufacturing

The Toyota Production System, later called Lean, focuses on three types of causes of error:

• Muda (waste)
• Mura (unevenness)
• Muri (overburden)

These three, however, are tied to manufacturing which is a process where you want to:

• eliminate unnecessary steps
• lower inventory
• reduce variation
• drive down costs

This has people look at eliminating the severn wastes identified in Lean manufacturing:

1. Transportation
2. Inventory
3. Motion
4. Waiting
5. Overproduction
6. Overprocessing
7. Defects.

These can be translated into wastes in product development as shown in the table below.

This, however, is still an incredibly shallow view of Lean. Lean is no more about Lean manufacturing than physics is about apples falling on people’s heads. It’s just where it came from.

While the seven wastes of Lean manufacturing do have counterparts in Lean product development as shown, it is much more effective to get to the underlying principle on which they rest than to translate directly from manufacturing to development.?

In manufacturing we’re trying to lower costs because value (the item being produced) has been set. In product development we focus on innovation so we can create more value

While the mantra in manufacturing may be “eliminate waste” it’s not as simple as that in product development. You can’t see the waste on a computer while a product is being developed. You can only see it while it is being demonstrated. The software world is not like the physical world. Product development is not like manufacturing.

In the product development world we want to avoid creating the waste as much as possible. We can do this with quick feedback and learning cycles using the levels that follow.

Lean as a systems thinking approach

The most salient aspect of systems thinking is that the system causes most of the errors. It differentiates because common cause and special cause errors. A good lean manager will look to the system to find what’s causing errors before blaming particular people or roles.

Lean as a management approach

Taiichi Ohno often remarked to his managers "if I come back in 30 days and you are doing the same thing then you have failed." Lean management is based on Deming’s belief that you have to attend to the system people are working in.

Lean as a continuous education approach

Through learning you can improve the way you work.

You eliminate delays in the workflow so that you can get feedback and understand what's happening in the complex world of knowledge work.

Quick feedback unobscures what we can't see due to complexity.

It reduces risk. Eliminates waste. Increases the opportunity for innovation.

Eliminating waste is a by-product of Lean-thinking in knowledge work. In manufacturing it was a goal because we knew what to do and were trying to eliminate variation. This is not true in knowledge work.

Lean provides a means to do this that can be applied everywhere value creation is taking place. Lean's essence can be said to be value, value stream, flow, pull, perfection. This creates the context for Lean-Thinking.

To apply it in product development you have to find the first principles of knowledge work. Too many people look at Lean practices and confuse them for principles.

Underneath all of this Lean you must have a drive to improve.

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This article is an excerpt from the book Amplio Development: The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams .