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LEAN

What is "Lean"?

Lean is a process management approach where the delivery of products and services are matched to the needs of the customers and requires a minimum use of time and resources. Entities that implement Lean find improvements in areas they never thought possible. Lean positively impacts safety, quality lead time, cost and employee morale. Lean empowers employees to participate and improve their own processes.

To learn more about the State of Colorado’s Lean program, please click here: Colorado Lean Program

There are some common misconceptions about Lean and it may be helpful to understand what Lean is not intended to do:

• Lean is not used to cut jobs. The goal of lean is to focus employee work to value-add activities and to help employees better meet customer needs. 

• Lean is not just for factories. While the roots of Lean come from Toyota, it has direct application to all businesses, specifically transactional-based businesses like banks, health insurance firms, hospitals and governmental entities.

• Lean does not promote downsizing. Lean is focused on increasing the value to the customer and in most cases, Lean actually grows a business.

DNR Projects

DNR has been actively involved in Lean since 2012. DNR agencies have conducted over 50 individual process improvement projects covering everything from responding to citizen complaints to increasing the effectiveness of field inspections to streamlining payment processing. These projects have improved processing times, increase outcome quality, and reduced costs.