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What Does Lean Mean?
The 13th edition of the APICS Dictionary contains the word Lean but does not define it. Instead, it says,
See Lean Manufacturing. So, how does a person define Lean? If you ask twelve people what their
definition of Lean is you will surely receive a variety of answers, as follows:
Lean is:
 A process for eliminating waste
 An approach for minimizing the use of resources
 A method for continuous improvement
 The means to reduce manufacturing costs and lead times
 The Toyota Production System
 A quality improving method
 A method for doing things faster and faster
 A philosophy of manufacturing
 A way to create more value for customers with fewer resources
 The practice of walking around to find operations or activities needing improvement
 A mapping approach to collect process performance data
 A company culture
 A method for improving product quality
 A process for continuous change
 A set of waste, quality, and cost reduction tools, procedures and methods
 A philosophy, as in Lean Thinking
 A strategy that seeks to produce a high level of throughput with minimum inventory
 An employee empowering approach
 Lean is a different way of thinking about manufacturing and how it can improve a
company’s business position.
Many different answers such as these raise questions. Is Lean even a process or a procedure, is Lean all
of the above, some of the above, or none of the above, or is Lean simply anything or everything a
company says it is and as it applies to them alone? The following additional comments offer individual
suggestions on what Lean is. These do not necessarily represent their company's definition, if their
company has one.

There have been so many additions, changes, and mostly deletions from Lean's original concepts that the
resulting state, whatever you wish to call it, produces results that don't even vaguely resemble Lean's
intent.

Lean is a system framed in a collection of rules and principles that drive continuous improvement in all
areas of a business.

Lean is a standard and a discipline that subscribes to eliminating waste of resources in such an
economical way that bottom line results are obtained in the most efficient and optimized fashion to the
extent that customer value is continuously increased while cost is proportionately reduced.

Lean is the support structure to produce what the customer wants, when the customer wants it, with the
lowest cost and highest quality by utilizing whatever tools are applicable.
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
I perceive Lean as a Business System and have developed the following definition. A Lean Business
System is an autonomous process striving to satisfy customer demand by producing one piece flow to
takt time via pull.

Every organization is lean. Everyone has a customer, everyone receives signals in regard to whether they
are doing something right or wrong. It's how you react to those situations as they relate to customer focus
and continuous improvement that determines if you are successful or not. It's life, evolution, competition Its lean.

There is no organization that is "Lean." That's probably an unreachable goal. Even Toyota, at its best,
admitted that it was only about 30% "lean."

Lean is the art of mobilizing and pulling together the intellectual resources of all employees in the service
of the firm so that it continuously delivers products of the highest quality to its customers, with the
minimum use of wasted resources

To me Lean is an emerging leadership philosophy which is at odds with the existing one of Command &
Control. That's one reason why it's not popular with both current leadership and the majority of business
schools who feel threatened by its radically different approach to leadership.

It has been shown that it can be dangerous for a new idea, such as Lean, to become fashionable
because it then gets pulled in many different directions that changes its focus significantly.

In regards to lean, after some deeper thought, I think we use the automotive industry or manufacturing as
the base of our experience, when in the end it is not the leanest industry. Lean is about creating wealth,
and to my knowledge the only industry that can create wealth out of thin air is the banking industry. How
do they do that? We should study that instead of Toyota, then we would all be lean.

Why debate what Lean is? I would compare the debate to the one Copernicus must have had in regards
to the Sun being the center of our solar system, against those that only wanted to teach and learn that the
earth was the center of the entire universe. There is no learning without debate.

Lean is best defined and approached from 10,000 feet, and that the details best flow from the wisdom,
mentoring and learning abilities of the individual personalities within the ranks of the organization.

"LEAN" is abbreviation for "a LEArniNg organization". If you do nothing more than put the punctuation in
the right place (Lea'n.), you'll have a perfectly succinct explanation of what Lean is.

I agree with other subscribers that lean has been marketed as a shop floor intervention and not a holistic
way of doing business

Lean is a set of principles/tools that enables you to continuously identify, visualize and eliminate those
things that are preventing you from achieving your goals and satisfying customer requirements.

Lean in its purest form is free market economics. The customer dictates quality and production. Anything
else is waste.

Lean is an operations strategy where everyone is required to take time every day, to improve the way we
do things, and where the resulting competitive advantage is translated into superior value for customers.

Lean is a methodology of providing products and services that increases the welfare (economic and
otherwise) of the producers, the customers, and all society.

Lean is a state of mind, a way of thinking and acting, where the coin of the realm is time and velocity,
NOT cost and efficiency!
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
My personal definition is that Lean is the application of continuous learning.

Lean is a strategy of continuous improvement.
Wow! After reading all these comments, trying to come up with a universally accepted standard definition of the
word Lean would appear to be a very difficult task, if at all possible. But, is it really necessary to have a universally
accepted definition? The standard answer is probably yes to assure that two people talking to each other, about
Lean approaches for example, are talking about the same thing. The problem is that definitions between different
people may not be compatible with each other which would then lead to misunderstandings. So how does a
company solve this potential different understanding problem? How does a company come up with their own
definition of Lean? One way is by recognizing that developing a definition of Lean is a sub-task in a company's
annual business planning activity.
How Do Companies Do Their Annual Business Planning?
First, perform a yearly analysis of the company
1. Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, and a postmortem
on last year's analysis.
2. Determines company's current competitive position and growth potentials in selected markets, old
and new.
Second, select company survival and new performance goals
1. Select specific survival goals such as correcting weaknesses or countering threats, etc.
2. Set specific performance goals such as improved company growth rate in terms of profitability or
earnings. Some of these may be contingent upon meeting survival goals.
Third, assuming growth is their main goal, which is true for most companies, they then decide what
they must do to grow.
1. Sell more existing and more enhanced products and services to current customers.
2. Acquire new customers.
3. Develop new products and services to meet existing and newly forecasted customer demands.
4. Plan to compete more effectively against products and services offered by competitors by
developing sustaining competitive advantages with both the company's enhanced and new products
and services. Also, improve product's competitive price, delivery and quality advantages to the extent
determined to be strategically necessary.
Fourth, select strategies for growth that will assure meeting company financial goals.
1. Evaluate customers' needs, wants, desires, demands, requirements and expectations.
2. Evaluate competitor's products in terms of how well they are satisfying competitor's customers.
Benchmark competitors as necessary.
3. Determine what changes and improvements to existing products and services and what totally new
products and services will be required to both satisfy customers and to stay ahead of competition.
Rapid innovation capabilities and rapid PD&D (Product design and development) capabilities are
essential at this stage to rapidly meet ever changing customer and market requirements.
4. Emphasize agility and flexibility in company operations.
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4. Determine which company and supply chain processes improvements should be made to improve
the sales of existing products and to develop sustaining competitive advantages.
Fifth, implement the strategies utilizing Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques as appropriate.
Here is where Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques typically enter the picture.
1. Set specific objectives for improving the company's product design and development capabilities in
terms of features, performance, lower costs, improved quality, etc.
2. Set time, cost, and quality improvement objectives for improving the efficiencies of those company
and supply chain processes that relate to improving customer satisfaction.
3. Set objectives for improving the company's agility and flexibility capabilities.
4. Provide training as necessary on the use of Lean and Six Sigma Tools and Techniques to analyze
processes variability and inefficiencies and to develop and implement solutions.
Sixth, develop a company statement on what its definition of Lean is and the benefits the company
is seeking from its application. Broadcast it to all employees. Examples:
Boeing Aircraft Co.
“Our entire enterprise will be a lean operation, characterized by the efficient use of assets,
high inventory turns, excellent supplier management, short cycle times, high quality, and low
transaction costs.”
Mike Sears, Sr. VP/CFO Boeing
Boeing is focused intensely on company growth and creating value for their stakeholders
including customers, shareholders, and employees.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.
“Lean manufacturing is a strategic choice for enterprises facing series competition. It is now
widely recognized that enterprises who have mastered lean methods will enjoy substantial
cost and quality advantages over those that are still practicing large-scale production. The
choice for enterprises today is simple: improve or die.”
Mike Walters, VP, Materials Mgt.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.
Boeing was obviously looking for a total enterprise solution to its goal of company growth while
Lockheed Martin was apparently prioritizing cost and quality as their improvement targets. In both
cases, department heads in all affected departments would apply their company definitions to their
departments by further developing particulars as they related to specific processes or operations. Note
that the definitions of Lean by each company is different from each other.
Note that one of the above statements appears to be very fitting.
"It has been shown that it can be dangerous for a new idea, such as Lean, to become fashionable
because it then gets pulled in many different directions that changes its focus significantly."
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Based on that statement, it might be appropriate to think of the term Lean as representing a specific
process or even a specific operation and not the entire universe of company processes. In that case you
could have many Lean definitions as, for example, Lean manufacturing, Lean machining, Lean
warehousing, Lean order entry, Lean supply chain, etc., each with its own specific definition of what
Lean means in their particular environment.
Sam Tomas
stomas2@cox.net