What to Expect From Corporate Lean Programs

What to Expect From a Corporate Lean Program

“Lean” programs have helped many manufacturers boost productivity. However, misplaced expectations of how quickly these programs can improve performance can make their implementation more difficult.

Torbjørn Netland and Kasra Ferdows

June 03, 2014

Often modeled after the Toyota Production System, corporate “lean” programs — by which we mean programs that find and eliminate unproductive activities while increasing value creation — can be powerful instruments for improving the performance of manufacturing plants. Successful lean programs help to emphasize parts of the production process that add the most value and eliminate those that don’t.

However, misplaced expectations of how quickly these programs ...