Friday, March 11, 2016

Are Lean operations and Innovation closely linked ?

Lean House

Lean Process
To answer this question better, we need to properly understand and differentiate between lean and Innovation.

What is Lean Operations or Lean Management or Lean Philosophy ?
Innovation, in simple terms ..


Lean is an operational philosophy which believes in improving value to the end customer by removing wastes in all aspects of production. 

Innovation taken up by organisations or individual is a process of converting an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value for the end customer.

Let us try to differentiate between Lean and Innovation.

Are all innovations lean or on the other hand, are all lean operations innovative ?

Can all innovations become lean ? Need not necessarily, but in most of the cases, innovations are lean. Innovations come from all walks of life. More often than not, it involves less application of effort, less application of energy, less wastes, less waiting, less carrying out of any operation that  adds the same final value to the end product.

Click on this link  for more details ..

All innovations need not necessarily be lean but all lean operations can be effectively innovative .. An initially lean operation can be a standard operation after some time, leading to more lean operations, which can be innovative.

Lean Operations are understood to be operations where the main focus is to attack wastes and reduce it. As an after effect of reducing wastes, we get improved value on offer to the customers. A Toyota car during manufacture through lean operations reduces wastes and hence gives better value to the customer by way of longer service life, better riding experience to customer and low cost of maintenance.

Innovation on the other hand is a change in the process of manufacture or use of the product or service that brings better value to the customer.

Both lean and Innovation target the end customer, by way of more value. The what exactly is the fine difference between them ?

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