Lean Operations
Also known as: Lean ManufacturingLean MethodologyToyota Production SystemTPSLean Startup Operations
💡The Concept
Lean operations systematically eliminates waste — any activity that consumes resources without creating customer value. Toyota identified 7 types of waste: overproduction, waiting, transport, over-processing, inventory, motion, and defects. Lean companies can operate at 50-70% lower cost than non-lean competitors while delivering higher quality.
⚠️The Trap
Teams apply 'lean' as an excuse to under-invest. Real lean isn't about cutting corners — it's about cutting WASTE. Eliminating your QA team isn't lean, it's reckless. Automating repetitive QA tests so your team focuses on complex edge cases? That's lean.
🎯The Action
Start with a value stream map: list every step from customer request to delivery. For each step, ask 'Would the customer pay for this?' If no, it's a candidate for elimination. Target: eliminate 20% of non-value-adding activities each quarter until your process is 80%+ value-adding.
⚡Pro Tips
The biggest waste in software companies is 'work in progress' (WIP). Limit WIP to 2-3 items per person. Starting 10 things and finishing none is the opposite of lean.
Batch size matters enormously. Deploying code once a week is waste — continuous deployment eliminates the wait, inventory, and defect accumulation of large batches.
🚫Common Myths
✗Myth: “Lean means cutting headcount”
✓Reality: The original Toyota Way explicitly forbids layoffs as a lean initiative. Lean frees up capacity to do MORE valuable work, not to fire people.
✗Myth: “Lean only works in manufacturing”
✓Reality: Toyota invented it for factories, but it applies everywhere: software (reduce deploy frequency), marketing (reduce campaign approval steps), hiring (reduce time-to-offer).
📊Real-World Case Studies
Toyota
1950s-Present
Toyota developed the Toyota Production System when they had a fraction of GM's resources. Instead of mass-producing inventory, Toyota built only what was ordered (just-in-time) and empowered any worker to stop the entire assembly line if they spotted a defect (andon cord). The result: Toyota overtook GM as the world's largest automaker while maintaining industry-leading quality.
Defect Rate vs Industry
60% fewer
Inventory Costs
80% lower
Time to Market
50% faster
Market Position
World #1 by 2008
💡 Lesson: Eliminating waste doesn't mean cutting quality — it means eliminating everything that ISN'T quality. Toyota proved you can be cheaper, faster, AND better simultaneously.
Knowledge Check
Your engineering team takes 4 weeks to ship a feature: 3 days coding, 5 days in code review queue, 4 days in QA queue, 2 days integration testing, 2 weeks waiting for the next release train. Using lean principles, what should you fix FIRST?
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