Introduction to Lean for Service and Manufacturing Organizations

Course details

Lean has its origin in the Japanese manufacturing industry in the 1980s as a waste reduction and improvement methodology. However, as it turned out, methods and principles of lean thinking spread to logistics, and from there on to the military and construction industries. Lean methods and principles have since been applied successfully across many other industries. Service and transactional industries that use Lean include healthcare, insurance, financial services and banking, call centers, government, IT, retail, and transportation. Lean is a methodology that incorporates a powerful set of tools and techniques designed to maximize customer value, while reducing waste along the entire value stream. It also focuses on improving overall efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction. Due to its ability to improve customer satisfaction and deliver bottom line financial gains to organizations, it is a preferred strategic choice for many business organizations. This course introduces the basic principles of Lean, including the five-step Lean process cycle, and shows how Lean can be integrated with Six Sigma to offer an optimal production management solution that fits your company's unique business needs.

• match industry types with examples of how Lean principles are applied
• identify the basic principles of Lean
• recognize correct application of the process for implementing Lean in an organization
• order the steps in the Lean process
• determine the best approach for integrating Lean and Six Sigma to address a given business need
• match production management systems with their corresponding characteristics
• match production management systems to corresponding business conditions that they are designed to address