Lean is the philosophy and practice of improving service to customers by continuously reducing the consumption of resources and eliminating waste throughout the entire organisation.  Lean solutions result in sustainable improvements in performance of any business or organisation.  Everyone, at all levels of the organisation, will become aligned and focussed towards achieving a common strategic vision.

Organisations exist because they provide a service or product of value to the end customer.  Value is defined by that customer.  In the chain of activities from creating the concept of the good or service, to sourcing the raw ingredients, processing them, delivering them into the customers hands and taking payment from the customer, there are always many steps that do not add value.

The underlying principles of Lean are to understand what is considered to be value by the customer, and to eliminate all those activities that do not contribute to creating that value.  Customers and technology are constantly changing, and in turn, the idea of what constitutes value, and the means by which it can be produced are also constantly changing.  In such an environment, successful organisations are those which can  quickly understand the new value requirements and continuously eliminate all but the value adding activities.

Lean is the term used to describe organisations that have a culture of continuous improvement in every activity that they undertake.

Why become lean?  Pressure from competitors anywhere in the world, and scarcity of resources, means that every organisation has a responsibility to our community to improve the way that they do things.  Doing nothing is not an option.

Lean can quickly improve quality, cost, delivery, safety and sustainability.  Improvements in the order of 25% increase in productivity, 50% improvement in quality and 50% reduction in lead time are typically achieved as systems are improved and waste is eliminated on the Lean journey.

Lean thinking, Lean manufacturing, Lean enterprise all refer to the systems initially conceived by Henry Ford but refined by Toyota and also known as the Toyota Production System.