BEING MEAN IS NOT LEAN

Lean and mean are different

Recession and depression are part of Business cycle. Firms apply all sorts of
strategies to survive this tide. When asked how? - These firms often explain
the clever ways in which they eliminated jobs, diverted the revenues from
the bottom-end customers and drained profits from the top end suppliers.
These are nothing but mean methods. They often mismatch the concept of
lean with mean.
Lean Thinking offers the perfect solution to Muda. It provides a means to specify value,
sequence of value creation activities and to processes these without any interruptions according
to ones request and continuously improving it to attain perfection.
It provides instant feedback on ones effort to translate Muda into value. Its not about
downsizing or job destruction, its a means to creation of new work.
The five dimensions to Lean are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Specify Value
Identify Value Stream
Flow
Pull
Perfection

Lean thinking has always been a little bit difficult to understand and counterintuitive which
results in firms not taking that leap towards lean. The definition of value changes from customer
to customer. It is mandatory for firms to dig deep to get hold on customers requirement. Value
stream maps helps differentiate between value added activities and non-value added activities of
a process. There has always been a common illusion that almost all task can be successfully
accomplished when products are worked out continuously by keeping the department members
completely engaged and high speed machines made to run hard. Flow is always about smart way
rather than the hard way. Quality is zoomed always when pull thinking and flow are put in place
together. Perfection is infinite and not a one-time ticket to ideal state.
Its a proven fact that Lean is an antidote to Muda(waste). But, people are still stuck with
traditional batch and queue model. Those who wants to reap the benefits of lean must dare to
leave batch mode behind. Fortune favors the one who dares.