Respect for People

• Respecting all of the stakeholders: employees, customers, suppliers, etc. It is essential for Lean to be successful at any organization and is more complicated than just treating people well.
• This pillar involves trusting people to continuously improve their work without impeding them with oversight; allowing them to create meaningful, challenging and satisfying work.

Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)

• The practice of making perpetual improvements and challenging the status quo.
• The most value of the continuous improvement mindset comes when it's embedded in an organization's culture.
• Creating an atmosphere where change is accepted and encouraged and there is a wide spread understanding that improvement is everyone's responsibility, from front line employees to directors.

5 Principles of Lean

Value - Value is defined by the customer of the process. What does the customer want and is every task/process in alignment with it?

The Value Stream - The process/steps that make up the life-cycle of the service/product from beginning to end. Any process/step that does not create value from the point of view of the customer of the process should be eliminated.

Flow - The concept of flow is to create a value stream with no interruptions or delays. When the value stream stops moving forwards, waste is inevitable.

Pull - Services/products are only provided/produced when the customer asks for them. This helps ensure flow by preventing a build up of work-in-progress (WIP) that clogs up the value stream.

Strive for perfection - Make continuous improvements (small & large) with the goal of a 0% defect rate & 100% customer satisfaction.

Value to the Customer

Lean delivers value through the identification and elimination of waste. Waste is defined as an activity/task that does not add value from the point of view of the customer.

Lean Identifies Three Types of Work Activities:

• Value Adding - where the act or process adds value from the customer's perspective and/or changes the product or service in a meaningful way.
• Non-Value Adding - any act that is not a value adding activity. (Waste)
• Business Non-Value Adding - any act that is not adding value but is required by law, policy or for safety sake.