Lean Management. Understand the philosophy for a better approach

Lean management is often featured in the media, frequently to denounce its excesses, more rarely to show its tangible benefits. What's more, we always forget to present it as a global system that includes an important managerial and humanist component.

We often forget its origins and the context in which it was developed, we ignore the objective it sets for everyone in the company, and we overlook the fact that the benefits we derive from it may be partial, unsatisfactory or short-lived.

However, Lean has proved its worth in many companies, whatever the country and culture, whatever the field of activity (industry, services, administration). It is now more commonly referred to as Operational Excellence, a more generic term, less associated with "productivity".

Lean's competitor, mass production, seems to have reached the end of its logic, and the rapid awareness of public opinion now condemns it in the relatively short term. Against this backdrop, Lean is of interest to society and has the potential to continue evolving. Because it is based on limiting consumption to just what is necessary to meet consumers' needs as precisely as possible, while integrating employees into the management of their environment, Lean can facilitate the adaptation of production to the context of restricting available resources and the changing relationship between people and work.

The purpose of this article is to present the basics of Lean management, the fundamentals you need to understand if you want to use Quality and Just-in-time tools successfully.

Starting with its origins and development by Toyota in Japan, we'll explain how the West gradually discovered it, how its tools and then its principles were adapted, with results that went from mediocre to appreciable as the understanding of Lean as a system rather than a catalog of tools grew.

We will explain the spirit and principles of Lean, before giving an overview of each of the fundamental tools through real-life examples. In this way, we will highlight the difficulties and constraints faced by those embarking on an operational excellence project, to help them succeed in what will in any case be an exciting and humanly rewarding adventure.