The fight for the meaning of “lean”
A few lean ideas have indeed spread well beyond the lean movement. “Batch is bad and flow is good” is still hard to do in practice, but is no longer disputed. Improvement (whatever that means!) is a key part of running any operation. Facilities should be 5S-ed. Problem solving rather than telling/delegating is also making it’s way in the business zeitgeist.
But many other core lean ideas are still far from being picked up as common sense because they require a deep change of outlook for most executives and lean practitioners: customer usage versus customer education, gemba versus boardroom, operator focus versus middle management focus, kaizen versus action plan, PDCA versus big ideas, intense
collaboration versus team spirit, etc. Read on here
