What Is Lean?

Lean is a customer-focused approach that concentrates on providing value by eliminating waste and increasing quality. It is customer-focused, meaning that a person or organization receives output, such as a product or service, from one or more processes. It provides value by satisfying a customer’s requirements. One way to do that is to eliminate waste by removing obstacles that impede the continuous flow of one or more processes delivering output to a customer. In turn, Lean increases quality by reducing defects in the output delivered to the customer.