The core principles of LEAN

Learn the principles of LEAN, and why a professional LEAN-tool like DigiLEAN is critical to be able to work LEAN.
Man standing in front of whiteboard with a marker drawing a process map

First, identify the value you are creating, and ask:

  • Who are your customers?
  • Why do they need- or buy your products or services?
  • How does your product change your customer’s situation?

Next, ask why your customers are willing to pay for your product

Devote your energy to product attributes customers are willing to pay for and eliminate wasteful features your market isn’t interested in.

You must create a product needed by your customers, and you have to differentiate yourself from your competitors to make customers buy your product instead of others.

Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping (VSM) is a tool to describe and visualize your company value stream. Perhaps it’s not a tangible tool, but more of a method. Nevertheless, it is used to identify waste, bottlenecks and improvement areas.

However, value streams are often large and complex, thus mapping it on a visual board takes a lot of space and often requires multiple participants to include all aspects.

Now the need for a professional LEAN tool starts to emerge

Continue with getting an overview of the current situation:
  • Plan your VSM scope
  • Put together a diversified collaboration team representing the company’s vertical axis.
  • Define the core business process
  • Break down the core business to sub-processes
  • Draw and visualize the processes

Identify and discuss bottlenecks, pain points and improvement areas. This will create the foundation to design the future state of the value stream.

The outcome should be a set of SMART targets for your organization, all of which to drive the processes towards a common goal: Improvement.

Identify and discuss bottlenecks, pain points and improvement areas. This will create the foundation to design the future state of the value stream.

The outcome should be a set of SMART targets for your organization, all of which to drive the processes towards a common goal: Improvement.

5 Principles of LEAN

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