The Lean Practitioner's Handbooks

09

Strategic planning

In this chapter I aim to answer the following questions:

1  Why is it important to have a strategic plan for Lean?

2  How do I create an integrated strategic plan?

3  How do I create a strategic picture of my whole organization?

There are normally many projects, priorities and initiatives being undertaken concurrently within any organization all of the time. A failure to coordinate these various activities can lead to them competing for management time, duplicating effort and wasting resources. The focus of this chapter is on creating an integrated strategy that avoids Lean being ‘something else to do’ and puts it at the heart of ‘the way we do things here’. If Lean is treated as just another initiative in the minds ...