Quick overview of how lean management principles apply to local school districts and the importance of lean education for school staff, adapted from The Elusive Lean Enterprise by Keith Gilpatrick and Brian Furlong.

1. What is Lean?
Simply put, Lean is a total change in the
culture of any organization. The new culture
creates processes that are free of waste and
deliver value to the end customer at lower
costs, higher quality, and on time, based on
the expectations of the customer.

2. What is Lean?
Some facts:
• Lean has very little to do with the product or
service that your organization produces.
• Lean can not be successfully planned and
implemented unless everyone in the
organization has detailed knowledge of Lean.
• Lean can not be implemented by a few.
Everyone in the organization must be
involved.

3. What is Lean?
Facts:
• Lean, as a program to eliminate people, is
doomed to fail.
• Suppliers and customers must participate in
the implementation of Lean.
• Lean is never fully implemented. Lean is a
continuous process improvement program
that demands periodic reviews of processes
that have been changed.

4. What is Lean?
Facts:
• Lean is about creating processes that have
predictable and reliable results.
• The focus of process change is to create a
process that meets the value expectations of
the downstream customer.
• More than 50% of the time and money spent
on existing non-lean processes is wasted!

5. What you may have heard about Lean:
“We don’t have the money or resources to
attempt a lean implementation”
Response: If 50% of what you do today is
wasteful and does not add value to the end
customer, surely you can afford to do things
differently.

6. What you may have heard about Lean:
“Oh, we tried Lean and it did not work”
Response:
If your organization failed to educate everyone on the
elements, rules, and tools of Lean, you were destined for
failure.
If your organization failed to produce a strategic plan for a
lean implementation, you were destined for failure.
If management was not committed to a culture change
and to participating and supporting the Lean effort, you
were destined for failure.

7. What you may have heard about Lean:
“Lean does not apply to schools”
Response:
Lean works everywhere. Lean started in the
automotive industry but has moved on to
healthcare, service businesses, government and
education. Again, Lean is about processes, not
products or services.

8. What you may have heard about Lean:
“My organization is not large enough to receive
any benefits from a Lean implementation”.
Response:
No organization is too small to receive benefits
from a Lean implementation. There is no
organization that is void of processes. If just one
of those processes is broken, you can receive a
benefit from it being fixed.

9. Lean for Schools
Lean for Education is identical to Lean for
Healthcare. At first glance healthcare involves
the patient and the doctor and education
involves the student and the teacher.
Both require facilities for delivery of the service,
hospitals for doctors, schools for teachers.

10. Lean for Schools
The challenge for administrators of both hospitals
and schools is to provide facilities and services that
deliver the service at an affordable cost and in a
safe environment and at the same time comply
with regulations imposed by third party
organizations.
In today’s world both hospitals and schools find
themselves competing for customers and there is a
constant demand to deliver quality results at low
costs.

11. Lean for Schools
Both healthcare and education are burdened with emotions
that can have an impact on how effective the respective
systems work from both a quality and cost perspective.
Emotions in education can have the same impact on the
results as egos have in business. Sometimes things are done
that do not produce a good result from a cost or quality
perspective.
The challenge for everybody involved is to focus on the key
component of Lean which is VALUE and provide the best
result from both a cost and quality standpoint.

12. What is Lean?
Elements of Lean:
Value
Value Stream
Flow
Pull
Perfection

13. Value
What is value?
Value is what the downstream or end customer is
asking or paying you to provide. Value is always
defined by the downstream or end customer.
Rule of thumb:
If your processes include steps that your customers
would not be willing to pay for, you should make
every attempt to eliminate those process steps.

14. Value
Question: Who is the customer?
• The Student
• The Parent
• The Taxpayer
Each of these would have a different value
statement if asked. The challenge for school
administrators is to create a balance that will meet
the value expectations of all parties involved.

15. Value Stream
The value stream is represented by everything
that your school does to deliver an education.
Rule of thumb:
A successful and sustainable lean program must
examine every process in the value stream.

16. Flow
Flow relates to processes that move students
through the education value stream at a pace
that meets the end customers expectation of a
quality and timely delivery.
On a macro level that could mean students
progressing successfully through a curriculum.
On a micro level that could mean how students
physically move through the transportation
system or within facilities from class to class.

17. Pull
Pull relates to processes that start on the
demand of a downstream customer. Avoid
spending human or financial resources if there is
no real demand.

18. Perfection
A Lean school seeks perfection in everything
that it does.
Every process in a Lean school is free of waste
and delivers quality results, at less cost, and
delivers the education in a safe and timely
fashion.

19. Culture Change
If the current culture at your school has created
processes that are wasteful and fail to educate
students on time, at a competitive price (cost to
taxpayers), and of high quality, changes must be
made.
Lean forces a culture change. Lean accomplishes
culture change in a controlled environment. The
key component of culture change is EDUCATION.

20. LEAN EDUCATION
Any culture that was developed and has
sustained itself did so by educating everyone as
to the basic concepts and beliefs of that culture.
Rule of thumb:
If every executive in your organization is not
educated relative to the elements, rules, and
tools associated with a lean implementation you
will fail in the implementation of that program.

21. LEAN EDUCATION
Rule of thumb:
If every worker in the organization does not
receive a comprehensive education in the
elements, rules, and tools of a lean program you
will fail.
If everyone in your organization fails to
participate in a lean implementation, you will
fail.

22. Kaizen
Once everyone in your organization has received a
comprehensive lean education you are ready to
begin a lean implementation.
• “Kaizen” is a team event that deals with every
aspect of change within your organization.
• Kaizen teams are used to identify value as
perceived by the end or downstream customer.
• Kaizen teams are used to depict the value stream
of every product or service offered by your
organization.

23. Kaizen
• Kaizen teams are used to analyze and fix every
process in the many value streams that exist in
your organization.
• Traditionally, Kaizen teams are small (6 to 8
people) who have a short period of time to
analyze and fix a process (one to two weeks is
ideal).

24. Kaizen
• Kaizen teams are made up of workers from
your organization as well as supplier and
customer organizations.
• No more than 2 of the team members should
have working knowledge of or work within the
process being examined.
• Function over form is the rule for a Kaizen
event. It does not have to look pretty and any
time spent on making it pretty is wasted.

25. Kaizen
• Every process should be revisited by a Kaizen
team one year after a Kaizen event. As
workers become more familiar with Lean they
will make changes to processes as they are
needed, using Kaizen methods and Lean rules
and tools.

26. Benefits
What can You expect to gain from a successful
and sustainable Lean implementation?
• A complete overhaul of your organization’s
culture.
• Processes that are free of waste, cost less, and
provide a safe environment for students,
teachers, and administrators.

27. Benefits
• Facilities that are safe, functional, and operate
at a lower cost.
• Employees that are lean thinkers and who can
adapt to change..
• Processes that can meet budgeted operating
costs.
• Reduced inventories (think supplies, food).

28. Benefits
• Reduced capital equipment costs.
• Maintenance programs that extend the useful
life of assets.
• Suppliers who can react to fluctuations in
volume needs.
• Satisfied customers (students, parents,
taxpayers) .
• Growth.

29. Next Steps
Contact Back in the Game, Inc.
www.backinthegameinc.com/contact
info@backinthegameinc.com
Shawn Stockman: 207-266-4362
Keith Gilpatrick: 561-445-1401
www.backinthegameinc.com