5. Does Lean Management have specific indicators?

It's important to be able to measure progress or a before-and-after situation. We therefore need robust indicators to judge this.

An important rule of Lean Manufacturing is that any improvement must be customer-focused or VA-focused. All indicators which take account of these two elements are therefore significant Lean Management indicators.

Examples of frequently used indicators:

• OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) measures the overall performance of manufacturing resources;

• The Pareto chart, the "20/80" concept, is used to work on the most important problems (related to waste and non-quality);

• Throughput, or the rate at which your system generates sales: the more agile your system is and the less cumbersome it is, the...