Although the roots of Lean were firmly planted in the manufacturing sector many of its principles and techniques can be used successfully within service sectors.

Lean thinking can be applied to a variety of businesses to increase value to their customers by considering the value generated in their processes; any step that is not adding value to the customer is changed or dropped.

Not so hard, you may think; but it requires some concepts that are new to most businesses.

Understanding of variation

• Concept of a value stream
• Systems thinking
• An analysis of customer demand

The side effects of designing processes against customer value are many and surprising:

• Lower cost
  
• Increase staff morale
• Higher productivity Increased capacity