Lean Management and Leadership

What is Lean Manufacturing?

To start from the beginning, Lean management comes from the term Lean Manufacturing. It is a management model that aims to minimize costs while maximizing added value to your customers. This model emerged in the 1970s in the automotive industry and it has since been exported to all types of companies, due to its success.

Lean Manufacturing focuses on optimizing the production system through reducing or eliminating processes that do not add value to the method or for the customer. The Lean philosophy is based on three key concepts:

·         Effectiveness. The company is focused on satisfying customer needs.

·         Efficiency in resources and processes, eliminating the ones that do not add value.

·         Innovation to identify and solve problems and promote changes in the organization.

The Lean methodology is based on eliminating the processes that do not add value:

·         Reducing movement of people.

·         Avoiding overproduction.

·         Avoiding waiting periods or inactivity.

·         Improving transport to avoid unnecessary movements.

·         Avoiding over-processing and unnecessary work.

·         Avoiding reprocessing or correction of defective products.

·         Reducing stock to avoid storage costs and product obsolescence.

What is Lean Management?

It is the way to incorporate the Lean methodology into management. Lean Leadership is the ability that enables an executive to be the driver of change in his or her company through excellence and success. The main goals are:

·         Achieve established levels of growth.

·         Improve the company’s financial statements or a part of them.

·         Radically improve or change the quality of the product or service.

·         Significantly reduce costs / improve efficiency.

·         Gain a competitive advantage over the competition.

·         Maintain continuous cost and quality improvement to turn the initial innovation into a sustained competitive advantage.

Recently, we have seen an increase in the demand for executives who can improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs and increase profitability using a Lean methodology, making it one of the most promising careers in terms of development and stability for the future.