How might the concepts of lean production transfer to an educational context. Drawing on various ideas from 'Lean Thinking' (Womak and Jones, 2003), this presentation outlines some of the key features of a lean approach, and proposes some ideas around what lean learning might look like, along with 5 Principles of Lean Education, adapted from Womak & Jones' 5 Principles of Lean Thinking.

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Lean Education
Dr David Parsons, National Postgraduate Director
The Mind Lab by Unitec, Auckland, New Zealand

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What is ‘Lean’?
★ An approach to manufacturing that has its roots
in the Toyota Production System in the 20th
Century
★ Applied to the development of software in the
21st century (post-agile)
○ Lean: Poppendieck & Poppendieck (2003)
○ Kanban: Anderson (2010)
★ Some ideas that may transfer to education

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The Machine that Changed the World
In their book The Machine That
Changed the World, James Womak,
Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos
explained how the Japanese car
industry, led by Toyota, had moved
from mass production to lean
production (Womack, Jones & Roos,
1990)

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Lean Production
➔ Lean production was able to reduce waste,
upskill workers, improve quality and provide
more variety in products
➔ Since then, people have looked for ways of
applying these lessons to their own activities
➔ This has been particularly true of the software
industry
➔ Can they also be applied to education?

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Lean Thinking
Womak & Jones followed up this work
with ‘Lean Thinking’ (2003) which
applied lean production ideas to a range
of other industries

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The Challenge of Lean Thinking
❖ A series of industry case studies about the long, slow
and endless process of lean transformation
❖ Lean is not a simple, easy solution
❖ Why read about reducing inventory and shortening
the supply chain, when our 'product' is such stuff as
intellectual property and graduating students?
❖ The challenge is to look at our systems through new
eyes, to understand the value of education

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Lean Thinking for Education
★ Womak (2006) defines education as three processes
○ Design (knowledge creation and delivery)
○ Make (providing learning experience for students)
○ Use (continuous learning)
★ Can we make all three of these processes lean?

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Why is it Hard to Define Value?
“Why is it so hard to start at the right place, to correctly define
value? Partly because most producers want to make what
they are already making and partly because many customers
only know how to ask for some variant of what they are
already getting.”
Womak & Jones (2003)

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The Value Stream
★ Every step in the educational supply chain should
deliver value to the learner
○ Does this part of the curriculum deliver value?
○ Does this form of assessment deliver value?
○ Does this step in the enrollment process deliver
value?
★ Focus on delivering value for the learner, not the
provider

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Types of Muda (Waste)
➔ Type 1 muda
◆ Waste required by fixed components in the way the
current system operates (e.g. a student
management system) and can't be removed just yet
➔ Type 2 muda
◆ Waste that can be eliminated immediately
➔ What kinds of muda do educators encounter?
◆ Quite a lot of type 1?

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Batch and Queue
● Every semester a set of classes is delivered
○ Over a fixed period of weeks
○ May have no relationship to how long it takes
someone to learn something
● Every year a batch of graduates is produced
○ Who may or may not be prepared to take
advantage of the opportunities currently offered
by the world around them

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Flow
● Learning flows seamlessly by right-sizing what is
offered to the learner
● Instead of broadcasting batches of content in mass
production lecture halls, the lean educator would be
engaged in the whole learning value stream
○ Working closely with their colleagues across the
total process
○ Not just batch-blocks of material

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Push vs. Pull
❏ Push model:
❏ Educational content pushed towards the learner,
over a timescale dictated by the institution
❏ Pull model:
❏ The learner pulls from the system what they need,
when they need it

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The Lean Enterprise
● You may be able to squeeze the muda out of your
school, department, faculty etc,
● However, the lean enterprise spans the whole value
chain
○ It may involve many organisations
● How can you convince all the stakeholders in the value
chain to cooperate in becoming a single lean enterprise,
setting their own agendas aside?

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Lean Learning
1. A curriculum delivered by multiple organisations,
tailored to suit the learner
2. No restrictions on hours per week, or total time
span, or how learning components may be
combined
3. Walk-in / lifelong enrollment
4. Any combination of blended learning modes
5. Instant assessment feedback
6. Add your own...

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Kaikaku and Kaizen
★ There are two ways of improving
○ Kaikaku (radical improvement)
○ Kaizen (continuous incremental improvement)
★ Neither have an end point, but the starting point can be
today
★ Be constantly on the lookout for muda that we can
remove from the value stream

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The Gemba - The ‘Real Place’
★ Where problems are visible and where the best
improvement ideas will come
★ For Lean Education, Womak (2006) suggests
★ Teach process thinking and problem solving by doing
★ Develop a range of gembas for applied learning
★ Use the school as a gemba if no other organizational
venues are available
★ Grade students on the degree to which problems are
actually solved using a rigorous method

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5 Principles of Lean Education
Adapted from Womak and Jones’ (2003) 5 principles of
lean thinking
1. Precisely specify value by specific learning experience
2. Identify the value stream for each learning experience
3. Make learning flow without interruptions
4. Let the learner pull value from the educator
5. Pursue perfection

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References
Anderson, D. (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology
Business. Sequim, WA: Blue Hole Press.
Poppendieck, M. & Poppendieck, T. (2003). Lean Software Development: An Agile
Toolkit. Boston MASS: Addison-Wesley Professional.
Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. & Roos, D. (1990). The Machine That Changed the World.
New York, NY: Free Press.
Womack. J.P. & Jones, D.T. (2003). Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in
Your Corporation (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
Womak, J.P. (2006). Lean Thinking for Education. Paper presented at the 2006 Lean
Educator Conference, Worcester, MA