In a article by the Lean Enterprise Institute in Boston, many years after the publication in 1996 of the book ‘Lean Thinking’, considered the manifesto of ‘lean thinking’, its authors – James Womack, then a business consultant and now founder of the Institute itself, and Daniel Jones, then a management lecturer at the Cardiff Business School of the University of Wales and now founder of the Lean Enterprise Academy in the UK – recall how that text was written “at a time when more and more organisations felt they had failed with empowerment programmes and how, at that point, the ideal path, for companies, seemed to be focused on the customer and not on employees or owners and involved working backwards, to create more value with less waste“.

Today,’ observe the two popularizers of lean thinking, ‘the central message remains the same, namely that there is a better way, for companies that feel the need, to ‘do more with less’ and to learn to work together more effectively.

We can formulate several hypotheses as to why lean thinking is still a methodology in vogue today, first of all the one according to which “lean thinking is more than just a method aimed at improving business management. It is a modern, alternative way of thinking that can be used to tackle any human endeavour, any kind of work. By virtue of this, it is something that is still very much alive,” adds John Shook, CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute.

But let us now approach its definition, its basic principles and its application.

Understanding Lean Thinking

A ‘way of thinking’, certainly. But, it must be emphasised, lean thinking is also a ‘practice’, a concrete action, aimed at ‘obtaining perfect value with zero waste, directly and indirectly, for the customer and for those who work to obtain that value’.

The content always refers back to the customer, to knowledge of his or her tastes, what he or she appreciates most and the problems he or she cares to solve.

In particular, Daniel Jones – today a mentor with regard to the application of lean thinking to all types of companies – speaks in this regard of “customer focus” and, in parallel, of the need for leadership capable of supporting the work that leads to achieving ‘perfect value’ for the customer.

In organisations that adopt lean thinking, “as opposed to leadership that simply decides on a plan and hands it over to a third party, leaders create a dialogue with employees and collaborators in order to guide them in developing those capabilities that lead to value creation“.

Even with regard to customer problems,’ Jones continues, ‘the leadership is asked to indicate a line to follow, a frame of reference;”to learn how to solve them as a team and to understand how to do it in the context of the company’s own needs.

The company that applies the principles of lean thinking possesses an organisation such that it is able to work towards understanding the customer and solving their problems over time, continuously, in a continuous process, in search of that ‘perfect value’ that can be achieved by always developing new products and services, as well as through the cycle of their use, from delivery to maintenance, upgrades and recycling.

“Lean thinking is not dogmatic – Shook points out – It is not a rigid and immutable set of beliefs and methods. On the contrary, it progresses in the context of specific situations. And as long as imperfect value is generated and waste exists in companies, there will be no end point for it’.

The Fundamental Principles

The organisation that espouses lean thinking is, first and foremost, a company in which one “learns to work together more effectively“, in which everyone, regardless of role and task, cooperates in the creation of value. There are no internal divisions or watertight compartments, but a cohesive working group, driven by the same goals.

The ‘macro principle’ of lean thinking envisages precisely a different approach to decision-making,’ Jones points out, ‘which does not traditionally proceed from the top down, separating the rooms of decision-making from those of its actual implementation, but which opts for sharing among all team members.

And all members – starting with top management – are called upon to follow an ideal path that leads to the full realisation of lean thinking, marked by a series of phases (five, to be exact) that, repeated over time, bring its principles to fruition and mark the continuous evolution, the constant improvement of the company in terms of its management. Here they are, in brief:

• Definition of the value that one intends to produce in one’s business, in relation to a product, service or project, being clear about what the customer really wants, what he needs, what problem he intends to solve.
• Workflow definition, identifying possible waste of resources, time and costs, also in relation to those processes and operations that are usual, but useful only in appearance, as they do not generate value. The focus is on those activities that lead to greater value.
• Optimisation of flow acting on waste and non-useful activities detected, reducing the former and replacing the latter with operations that bring concrete results.
• Implementation of a pull system, placing those activities that generate the most value within a system in which it is the customer who leverages them through their ‘demand’, expressing a need that finds an effective and satisfactory response in them.
• Continuous improvement, a peculiarity of the Lean approach to business management, whereby there is no goal reached once and for all, but rather an ongoing process, a ‘journey’ that the company undertakes in pursuit of its own continuous evolution.

Applying Lean thinking

Essential, in the application of lean thinking, is – first and foremost – its dissemination, the sharing of its contents and principles among all those who work within the organisation.

The pervasiveness of agile thinking and the adherence to it by the entire workforce is, in fact, the primary condition for the lean transformation to begin, for change to take place in company management and, related to this, the improvement of its entire operations.

And if ‘change’ and ‘improvement’ – according to lean thinking – are part of a non-stop evolutionary process, of an ideal journey, everyone in the company must be able to take part in it, with their own role and responsibilities and, above all, focused on the objectives.

The five principles just summarised constitute the toolbox for tackling this journey, made up of daily and constant work in pursuit of maximum value, ‘perfect value’ (for oneself and for the customer), with zero waste.

The first goal is reached by listening to the client, understanding his world, his reality, his goals, picking up the critical issues that hinder him and trying to dismantle them through problem solving.

Instead, practising waste control means looking inside the organisation, e.g. at production (intervening on that which is not useful from the point of view of value generation), at the handling of goods (eliminating that which is not needed) and, again, at products in stock (reducing them to a minimum), at the provision of services (concentrating only on those most appreciated by the customer) and at certain staff skills, to ensure that redundancies do not occur in terms of knowledge and human capital either.

Lean thinking and SMEs: a winning combination

If it is true that the origins of lean thinking can be traced back to the American entrepreneur Henry Ford, who laid the foundations of the first lean manufacturing model (applied to the management of the car manufacturer of the same name), subsequently perfected by the multinational Toyota, the oft-quoted CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute in Boston, John Shook, is careful to emphasise how agile thinking is open to any human enterprise, to any type of work context. And it is precisely its flexibility, its ability to fit into different realities, that makes it always relevant, despite the passage of years.

There is no company that is better suited than others to embrace lean thinking. And it is wrong to think that it is a practice that only benefits large manufacturing companies and multinationals.

‘Doing more with less’, working together towards a shared goal, focusing only on projects that bring tangible results and abandoning those activities that are of little use, are principles that, if followed systematically, also enable SMEs to be competitive in their respective markets.

Some of these principles are even part of the DNA of small and medium-sized enterprises, such as, for example, the fight against any form of waste, understood as the rejection of the superfluous in the production of value, to focus instead on a pragmatic vision of business management.

Attention to the precise definition of goals, tenacity in achieving them and team cohesion are also hallmarks of SME operations and contents of lean thinking, as is the culture of continuous improvement, not only with regard to production and value generation, but also to processes, relationships and team management.

The factors that make lean thinking a strategic ‘tool’ for SMEs that decide to apply its criteria include, in particular, the optimisation of procedures and systems, so that the company can streamline its workflows, reducing timeframes and rationalising the use of its workforce.

Also strategic is the consistent planning of activities, in many cases a weak point in small and medium-sized enterprises, whose internal organisation often suffers from overlaps and a lack of precise direction.

Finally, another weakness of SMEs concerns the lack – sometimes – of a clear definition of roles and tasks internally, hence the absence of clear-cut responsibilities, so that the action can no longer be distinguished from its author.

The method inspired by lean thinking, in this case, is useful to involve all team members (no one excluded) in a more incisive way, stimulating, in everyone, the development of their own specific skills, the awareness of their role and the motivation to take on the responsibilities that derive from them.