Lean is the word – be it your body type or organization structure. Lean Organization is a term which is used and rather over used time and again yet is not completely understood by many.
Lean Management Institute of India (LMII) is a nonprofit entity driven towards promoting ‘Lean Thinking’ in organizations in order to provide the best quality services to the customers, with fewer resources and zero wastage. In this blog post we help you understand what does a Lean Organization actually means and how you can transform your organization into a Lean one.
What does Lean mean in Lean Organization?
The essence of Lean is providing maximum customer value and minimizing waste. That is building more values for your customers, but with fewer resources.
A Lean Organization recognizes customer value and thereby gears its key resources towards improving and increasingly it continuously. It does this by changing the focus of management towards enhancing the horizontal flow of products and services rather than simply focusing on separate assets and technologies in the vertical departments. Along with this Lean Organizations aims at bringing down the costs of its goods and services by eliminating waste from the entire value streams.
How to transform your Organization into a leaner one?
You can very easily turn into a Lean Organization, all you need is to be clear about your organization’s mission and goals. Once you are clean on this front, you just need to follow the below given steps.
Honest Assessment of your work practices so that you cut down the current practices which might be inconvenient to your customers. The best example can be cutting down on cost of production by trying to get the raw materials from a local provider rather than from a provider in a distant place. This way not only will you save on shipping charges but will also get your raw materials sooner than before.
Intelligent Cutting Down of the Workforce is the next step. As difficult as it may seem a leaner and more productive workforce is far better than a beefed up one. Think about the possibilities of outsourcing your work rather than spending much more on the in-house team.
Appreciate and Give Credit to your employees for their hard work and dedication towards their work and the organization. This way not only will you motivate them, but will also encourage them to come up with fresh ideas and thereby make meaningful contribution the organization.
Regularly Revise and Improvise your method of operation. This will give you a realistic picture of how your organization is working and where it is lagging behind. Transforming into a Lean Organization is an on-going process, thus regular revision and improvising of your working methods is an important step.
Along with this we recommend that you attend Lean Summits and Lean Workshops on a regular basis to stay updated on the new and fresh ideas and innovations which will eventually help your organization.
Follow these Steps and Find your Lean Inspiration!
Lean Management Institute of India 