The Real Meaning of Lean

The last statement may have you now wondering if Lean is actually mean because it seems to advocate elimination of positions, particularly managers and supervisors. That is not the case, and to make the Lean philosophy and culture of an organization sustainable, no one should be let go because waste is reduced and improvements made. People need to be reassigned to engage on value-added tasks or to work on constantly reducing NVA for others. (i.e. managers, supervisors and HR should be challenging the systems to reduce as much waste as possible.)