lean methodology case study

The Lean Post / Articles / Lean Management Case Studies Library

Lean Management Case Studies Library

By Chet Marchwinski

May 16, 2014

Learn how a variety of businesses and organizations used lean management principles to solve real business problems. We’ve arranged the examples in 16 categories to help you find the ones right for your environment.

Lean Management Examples from a Variety of Businesses

The following case studies of lean management principles in action show you how a variety of real businesses solved real business problems under diverse conditions.

We’ve arranged the stories in 16 categories to help you find the examples you need. There is some overlap. For instance, a “Lean Manufacturing” case study may also appear with “Privately Held Companies.”

Lean Manufacturing

• Logistics, Supply Chain, and Warehousing
• Lean Material Handling
• Job Shops (Low-volume, High-mix Manufacturing); Tool and Die
• Lean in Government
• Lean Healthcare
• Lean Accounting
• Lean Construction
• Lean in Office and Service Processes
• Lean in Education

Problem Solving

Pull Systems

Culture Change

People Development

Privately Held Companies

Maintenance

Many of the executives who took part in these transformations are interviewed in LEI’s Senior Executive Series on Lean Leadership . After reading the case studies, be sure to get their personal perspectives on leading change. (Feel free to link to this page, but please respect the copyrights of LEI and journalists by not copying the articles.)

Are you doing something new or notable in the practice of lean management? Let us share what you learned with the lean community. For more information, contact LEI’s Director of Communications Chet Marchwinski at cmarchwinski at lean dot org

Thrustmaster Turns Around

Learn how Thrustmaster of Texas successfully adopted lean thinking and practices to make sustainable improvements in a short period of time, and how other manufacturers of highly engineered, low-volume products can follow their lead using the Lean Transformation Framework.

Lean + Circular Principals = a New True North for Manufacturer

SunPower’s lean journey resembled most others until it defined a new mission, a new True North by combining lean principals with those of the “circular economy” to launch what it is calling a CLean Transformation.

Sustain Your Lean Business System with a “Golden Triangle” After a medical device maker took a hit to margins to fight off global competition, it rebuilt them by lifting its lean operating system to a higher level and keeping it there with a “golden triangle” of sustainability.

Followup Story:

Manufacturing Balancing Act: Pull Versus ERP

In this follow-up to “Sustain Your Lean Business System with a ‘Golden Triangle,’” a case study about Phase 2 Medical Manufacturing, the company needs warehouse space to keep pace with sales growth spurred by the lean transformation. Instead, it expands a pull system by connecting the plan-for-every-part database that underpins one-piece flow production with ERP, typically associated with big batch production.

Cultivating a Lean Problem-Solving Culture at O.C. Tanner If you are in the “appreciation business”, you have to live it in your own workplace. For O.C. Tanner that meant a lean transformation had to show the company appreciated and wanted people’s problem-solving ideas. Here’s a report on that effort, including what worked and what didn’t.

Lean Partnership with Dealer Network Helps Vermeer Reduce End-to-End Inventory on Top Sellers

A lean transformation had taken heavy-equipment manufacturer Vermeer away from batch manufacturing, but batch ordering by dealers was delaying how quickly they got equipment like brush chippers. Learn how it  began converting its domestic industrial-line distribution network to lean replenishment, improving service to end customers and improving cash flow for Vermeer and its dealers.

Herman Miller’s Experiment in Excellence At Herman Miller, the lean management effort helps it build problem solvers as well as world-class office furniture. And as this case study shows, lean practices also helped it weather a brutal recession.

Build Your “House” of Production on a Stable Foundation Rigorous problem solving creates basic stability in a machining intensive facility.

A Journey to Value Streams: Reorganizing Into Five Groups Drives Lean Improvements and Customer Responsiveness An approach to creating a value-stream culture centered on autonomy, entrepreneurialism, and lean principles.

Change in Implementation Approach Opens the Door at EMCO to Greater Gains in Less Time A relatively quick, intensive project accelerates the rate of improvement and creates a showcase facility for spreading lean concepts.

Creating the Course and Tools for a Lean Accounting System A lean accounting implementation fills the frustrating disconnect between shop-floor improvements and financial statements.

For Athletic Shoe Company, the Soul of Lean Management Is Problem Solving After taking a lean tools approach to change, management re-organized the transformation around problem solving and process improvement to create a culture that engaged people while boosting performance.

Knife Company Hones Competitiveness by Bucking the Status Quo An iconic family-owned company turns to lean manufacturing to reduce costs by at least 30% to keep its U.S. operations open.

Lean Transformation Lives and Dies with Tools and Dies After a failed first try at just-in-time production , a company transforms tool maintenance, design, and fabrication to create a solid foundation for a second attempt.

Seasoned Lean Effort Avoids “Flavor-of-the-Month” Pitfall A look at how one company’s approach to what new tools it introduced, in what order, and how it prevented each new technique from being viewed as a “flavor of the month” fad.

Shifting to Value-Stream Managers: a Shop-Floor Revolution Leads to a Revolution in Plant Organization

Two years into a lean transformation, the low-hanging fruit has been plucked and progress has started to slow. Read how a Thomas & Betts plant recharged the transformation and reached higher levels of performance by using value-stream managers to span functional walls.

Using Plan-Do-Check-Act as a Strategy and Tactic for Helping Suppliers Improve

At Medtronic’s Neuromodulation business unit, the plan-do-check-act cycle is used on a strategic level to guide overall strategy for selecting and developing key suppliers as well as on a tactical level for guiding lean transformations at supplier facilities.

back to top

Logistics, Supply Chain, and Warehousing How a Retailer’s Distribution Center Exemplifies the Lean Precept “Respect for People,” and Reaps the Benefits

To make sure training engaged and resonated with people after previous attempts at a lean transformation faltered, LifeWay matched lean management tools and principles to its Bible-based culture and language.

Lean management case study series: Lean in Distribution: Go to Where the Action Is!

Starting with daily management walkabouts and standard work , this distributor had laid the groundwork for steady gains for years to come, just two years after its first kaizen workshop .

Putting Lean Principles in the Warehouse

Executives at Menlo Worldwide Logistics saw an opportunity to leapfrog the competition by embracing lean in its outsourced warehousing and receiving operations.

Lean Thinking Therapy Spreads Beyond the Shop

A company expands the lean transformation from the shop floor to international distribution, domestic shipping, and product development.

Sell One, Buy One, Make One: Transforming from Conventional to Lean Distribution

Large inventories to cover fluctuations in demand once characterized Toyota’s service parts distribution system — but no more. Here’s how one DC made the switch.

Material Handling

Following Four Steps to a Lean Material-Handling System Leads to a Leap in Performance

Creating the critical Plan for Every Part was one step in a methodical four-step implementation process to replace a traditional material-handling system.

Low-volume, High-mix Manufacturing; Tool and Die

The Backbone of Lean in the Back Shops

Sikorsky managers apply the lean concept of “every part, every interval” (EPEI) to level the mix in demand and create flow through a key manufacturing cell .

Landscape Forms Cultivates Lean to Fuel Growth Goals

With single-item orders 80% of the time, a low-volume, high-mix manufacturer decided single-piece flow cells were the best way decided the best way to add new products without having to constantly reconfigure production.

Lean Transformation Lives and Dies with Tools and Dies

After a failed first try at just-in-time production, a company transforms tool maintenance, design, and fabrication to create a solid foundation for a second attempt.

Canada Post Puts Its Stamp on a Lean Transformation

The “ inventory ” of mail already is paid for, so moving it faster doesn’t improve cash flow as in lean manufacturing. But Canada Post discovered that traditional batch-and-queue postal operations could benefit from lean principles.

Lean Thinking in Government: The State of Iowa

This story examines a kaizen event at a veterans home and more broadly at the lean effort in Iowa government.

Lean Thinking Helps City of Chula Vista with Budget Crunch

Goodrich Aerostructures’ Chula Vista plant introduces city government to lean thinking and practices so in order to maintain municipal services without resorting to further cuts in the workforce.

Using Lean Thinking to Reinvent City Government

Grand Rapids, MI, turns to lean principles to consolidate operations, eliminate wasted time and effort, and streamline to improve productivity while providing the quality of service that residents want.

Transforming Healthcare: What Matters Most? How the Cleveland Clinic Is Cultivating a Problem-Solving Mindset and Building a Culture of Improvement

The Cleveland Clinic reinvents its continuous improvement program to instill a problem-solving mindset and the skillset to solve everyday problems among the clinic’s thousands of caregivers.

View from the Hospital Floor: How to Build a Culture of Improvement One Unit at a Time

In order to do more and improve faster, the Cleveland Clinic is rolling out a methodology for building a “culture of improvement” across the 48,000-employee hospital system as this followup to the above story shows. Here’s how it works according to the people making the changes.

Dentist Drills Down to the Root Causes of Office Waste

Dentistry is a job shop that Dr. Sami Bahri is out to improve fundamentally for the benefit of patients through the application of lean principles.

Lean management case study series: Pediatric Hospital in Tough Market Pegs Growth to Lean Process Improvement

Lean improvement projects at Akron Children’s Hospital have saved millions of dollars, increased utilization of expensive assets, and reduced wait times for patients and their families.

Lean Design and Construction Project an Extension of Lean Commitment at Akron Children’s Hospital

Input from nurses, doctors, therapists, technicians, and patient parents heavily influenced design decisions..

“Pulling” Lean Through a Hospital

A thoughtful rollout of lean principles in the ER and eye-opening results created a “pull” for lean from other departments.

Best in Healthcare Getting Better with Lean

Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, stresses to doctors that the lean effort is aimed not at changing the moment of care, the touch moment between doctor and patient, but the 95% of the time when the patient is not in the doctor’s office

Fighting Cancer with Linear Accelerators and Accelerated Processes

Cross-functional team design and implement a lean process to dramatically increase the number of patients with brain and bone metastases receiving consultation, simulation, and first treatment on the same day without workarounds or expediting.

Massachusetts General Looks to Lean

A proton therapy treatment center, for many adults and children the best hope of beating cancer, applies lean principles to increase capacity.

New Facility, New Flow, and New Levels of Patient Care: The wait is over for patients at the Clearview Cancer Institute in Alabama

Physicians and staff have tirelessly reengineer processes and patient flow to eliminate as much waiting and waste as possible.

The Anatomy of Innovation

At a hospital in Pittsburgh, the emerging vision for the “hospital of the future” is described as giving the right patient, the right care, at the right time, in the right way, all the time.

Creating the Course and Tools for a Lean Accounting System

A lean accounting implementation fills the frustrating disconnect between shop-floor improvements and the financial statement.

Knife Company Hones Competitiveness by Bucking the Status Quo

An iconic family-owned company turns to lean manufacturing to reduce costs by at least 30% to keep its U.S. operations open.

Office and Service Processes

The “inventory” of mail already is paid for, so moving it faster doesn’t improve cash flow as in lean manufacturing. But Canada Post discovered that traditional batch-and-queue postal operations could benefit from lean principles.

Lean Landscapers

At an Atlanta landscaping company, lean practices are making inroads into a service industry in unusual yet fundamental ways.

LSG Sky Chefs Caters to New Market Realities

Business at airline caterer LSG Sky Chefs dropped 30% when airlines cut flights after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Sky Chefs responded with a rapid launch of a lean initiative.

leveraging Lean to Get the Oil Out

Aera Energy LLC, a California oil and gas company,  relies on lean principles to improve key processes, including drilling new wells, repairing existing ones, and maximizing the number of barrels of crude pumped each day.

Columbus Public Schools Use Process Thinking to Improve Academic Achievement.

Columbus, OH, public schools, experiment with lean tools and process thinking to remove wasteful activities that don’t help them help students learn.

Lean Inroads into Alabama Academia

How the University of Alabama in Huntsville integrated lean concepts throughout its industrial engineering curriculum.

Linking Lean Thinking to the Classroom

Value-stream mapping is one of many activities included in the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS), an academic program designed to link high-school classroom learning to the skills needed in college and business.

Build Your “House” of Production on a Stable Foundation

Rigorous problem solving creates basic stability in a machining intensive facility.

For Athletic Shoe Company, the Soul of Lean Management Is Problem Solving

After talking a lean tools approach to change, management re-organized the transformation around problem solving and process improvement to create a culture that engaged people while boosting performance.

Toothbrush Plant Reverses Decay in Competitiveness

The rapid introduction of a lean system, beginning with just-in-time production and pull, helps a highly automated Midwest plant fight off overseas competition by reducing lead times and inventory while augmenting the plant’s advantage in service.

A Journey to Value Streams: Reorganizing Into Five Groups Drives Lean Improvements and Customer Responsiveness

An approach to creating a value-stream culture centered on autonomy, entrepreneurialism, and lean principles.

Making Lean Leaders — Ariens internship program develops lean and leadership skills

Besides making snow-blowers, mowers, and string trimmers, Ariens Co., of Brillion, WI, makes lean leaders.

Starting with daily management walkabouts and standard work, this 84-year-old, family-owned distributor laid the groundwork for steady gains for years to come, just two years after its first kaizen workshop.

Sustain Your Lean Business System with a “Golden Triangle”

After a medical device maker took a hit to margins to fight off global competition, it rebuilt them by lifting its lean operating system to a higher level and keeping it there with a “golden triangle” of sustainability. You’ll recognize two elements of the triangle right away: visual control and standardized work . The third, accountability management or a kamishibai system, is probably less well known but just as critical.

Cultivating a Lean Problem-Solving Culture at O.C. Tanner

If you are in the “appreciation business”, you have to live it in your own workplace. For O.C. Tanner that meant a lean transformation had to show the company appreciated and wanted people’s problem-solving ideas. Here’s a report on that effort, including what worked and what didn’t.

Lean Thinking in Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Takes Wing at FedEx Express

A major check that used to take 32,715 man-hours was cut to 21,535 hours in six months. That translated into a $2 million savings, which dovetailed with the company’s emphasis on reducing costs during the recession.

Construction

Input from nurses, doctors, therapists, technicians, and patient parents heavily influenced design decisions—from incorporating emergency room hallways that protect the privacy of abused children to the number of electrical outlets in each neonatal intensive care room.

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About Chet Marchwinski

Chet has been a humble, unwashed scribe of the lean continuous improvement movement since books by Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo first hit North America in the 1980s. At LEI, he contributes to content creation, marketing, public relations, and social media. Previously, he also wrote case studies on lean management implementations in…

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Lean Six Sigma Project Examples | 17 Full Case Studies

Ready to begin your first Lean Six Sigma project? Looking for examples for inspiration or reference to get you started? Here are some project storyboards from different industries and from home. Remember, Lean Six Sigma can help you with more than just work!

• Reducing Underwriting Resubmits by Over 20%  

Governments

• A Call to Change: Pioneering Lean Six Sigma at Los Angeles County  
• Can Lean Six Sigma Be Applied in County Government?  
• How the City of San Antonio Increased Payments for Street Maintenance Using Lean Six Sigma  
• Reducing Bid Tab Creation Cycle Time by 22%  
• Reducing Cycle Time for Natural Disaster Response by 50%  

Manufacturing

• Increasing First Run Parts From 60% to 90% With Lean Six Sigma  
• Reducing Bent/Scratched/Damaged (BSD) Scrap for Building Envelopes  
• Reducing Lead Time in Customer Replacement Part Orders by 41%  
• Reducing Learning Curve Ramp for Temp Employees by 2 Weeks  
• Reducing Purchase Order Lead Time by 33% Using Lean Six Sigma  
• Herding Cats Using Lean Six Sigma: How to Plan for and Manage the Chaos of Parallel Processes  
• Lean Six Sigma Increases Daily Meat Production by 25%  
• Lean Six Sigma Helps Feed People In Need 45% Faster  
• Accelerating Lean Productivity With Immersive Collaboration  
• Reducing Incorrect Router Installations by 60% for Call One  
• Reducing Software Bug Fix Lead Time From 25 to 15 Days  

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What is Lean methodology?

Browse topics.

Like NASA mission control specialists, project managers must track numerous aspects to ensure their team delivers projects without incident. But while NASA manages spacecraft, project managers monitor deliverables.

Lean methodologies can help prevent project management disasters akin to the Apollo 13 catastrophe, allowing you to deliver projects on time and within budget. 

Lean methodology facilitates an ongoing process of incremental adjustment, significantly accelerating product delivery by optimizing resources and effort and allowing teams to work efficiently and effectively.

In this article, you will learn more about Lean methodology, its benefits, and how  Jira can help your software team implement its principles.

History of Lean methodology

Lean methodology aims to fully optimize your team’s process and output through continuous improvements. When done well, Lean allows teams to deliver customer value efficiently. 

Toyota Founder Kiichiro Toyoda developed the Lean methodology after World War II to conserve resources and eliminate waste. After observing the purchasing and restocking of items at a supermarket, he conceived the just-in-time concept, which focuses on making products exactly when customers need them. 

Toyoda's concept morphed into the Toyota Production System , which eventually became the Lean methodology. From these small beginnings, Lean evolved into the foundation of Agile project management —several industries, including software development, construction, and healthcare, now use Lean methodology.

Overview of Lean methodology

Lean methodology rests on two pillars that provide a framework for all Lean projects: Continuous improvement and respect for people.

• Continuous improvement : An ongoing feedback loop helps teams make progressive changes to processes, products, and personnel to improve systems continuously. By identifying, evaluating, and modifying existing processes or systems – one cog at a time – teams can eliminate waste and improve efficiency on the whole.
• Respect : Managers recognize the value of team contributions and customer feedback, and take those insights and ideas seriously. Lean managers distribute work throughout the workflow in the most efficient manner to encourage close collaboration and maximize value to customers. 

The core principles of Lean methodology have been developed with both of these factors.

Principles of Lean methodology

It’s essential to consider the impact your work will have on the customer experience. Lean’s five core principles help teams organize tasks and provide project managers with oversight. These five core principles include:

1. Identify value

To deliver value to your customers, you must first understand their needs. You can do this by:

• Engaging directly with customers to learn about their pain points.
• Identifying how your product helps mitigate those pain points.

Next, you need to define your product’s value in meeting customer needs and communicate this with your team. You can do this by framing the team’s work around how it impacts the customer experience and researching the best tools to help your team deliver value to your customers.

Identifying value saves time and money by ensuring your team builds only features that add value for your customers. 

2. Map the value stream

The activities needed to deliver quality customer experiences form part of the value stream. Value stream mapping uses diagrams to help visualize the project process, aiding in value stream management , which is critical to eliminating waste. 

Value stream mapping involves the following activities: 

• Identify the problem and choose the right team : Identify your customers’ main pain points, and then choose a team with the skills to solve these problems. 
• Bound and map the process : Limit the project's scope to necessary activities. You can then map the process using the Scrum board template in Jira and set dates for each deliverable. 
• Collect data : Understand what resources are needed by tracking data such as the hours the team spends working on the project.
• Assess and adjust : To ensure continuous process improvement, constantly assess processes and ask the question, “Is there a better way to do this?”

3. Create a flow

A flow state is when the team is in a groove and work is moving smoothly, so much so that we don’t notice the passage of time. Creating a flow state increases team engagement and performance. 

Team flow reflects the efficiency of the value stream, which you can continuously fine-tune using the ongoing feedback loop. Lean methodology requires a smooth and continuous flow to reduce delays and minimize handoff times.

“When implementing Lean, focus on flow,” says Atlassian’s Modern Work Coach Mark Cruth. “Flow is at the center of each element of Lean, whether it’s reducing waste, eliminating silos, or continuously improving…all elements come back to flow!”

You can improve your team’s flow by implementing the following: 

• Cross-functional collaboration : Silos are the kryptonite of Lean. Your team should participate in the entire process and collaborate with other teams, if necessary, to accomplish their tasks. For example, this might involve looping in customer success teams and getting their input on customer pain points. Moreover, your team can deepen their knowledge of how other departments operate.

Task tracking : Kanban boards , or the Kanban template in Jira, can help you assign tasks, visualize work, and coordinate your team. These cards help teams track the progress of tasks throughout the project lifecycle . 

4. Establish pull

With a pull system, teams only work on what the customer needs when they need it, producing according to actual customer demand, not forecasted projections. 

To accurately assess customer needs, the team must talk to customers and seek their input.

5. Seek perfection

Lean requires a growth mindset and strives for perfection through continuous improvement, using an ongoing feedback loop to help the project manager, team, and company reduce waste and enhance efficiency. 

Benefits of Lean methodology

As a project manager, you’ve probably encountered a project hiccup or two, such as waiting for stakeholder feedback. If the feedback comes too late, the entire project stalls. Lean methodology has many benefits that alleviate such roadblocks, such as:

• Increased efficiency : By mapping the value stream, you can center work around customer needs, eliminating unnecessary work on products and services customers do not want. 
• Fewer issues : Lean mitigates issues, such as lack of communication and unrealistic deadlines, before they become larger problems. In the case of communication, Lean provides tracking and transparency so everyone is clear on tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines. Since the team participates more closely in the process, they can also push back on any unreasonable timelines. 
• Reduced costs : By creating a clear plan and eliminating roadblocks, you can save money by producing just enough to meet customer demand. That way, you’re not producing more stock than necessary, which is especially important for physical products. 
• Improved customer relationships : By focusing on customer value, you create stronger customer relationships, which is crucial to a business. 
• Continuous improvement : Lean’s ongoing feedback loop helps refine and continually improve processes to deliver value efficiently. 
• Team investment : Because Lean requires more involvement upfront from your team, they’ll be more engaged with the outcome. They’ll have a say on what they’re working on and when they expect to complete it. An empowered team is an engaged one. 

Potential challenges of Lean methodology

Despite its numerous benefits, practicing Lean may present some challenges that project managers should recognize and learn to overcome. These challenges include:

• Fix : Get the team’s buy-in as early as possible and show them how Lean can help.
• Fix : When onboarding the team, provide adequate training in Lean methodology. You can enroll your team in a Lean certification program that will provide hands-on training. With a certification, you’ll be confident that they have the proper knowledge of Lean methods. 

Focus on tools rather than culture : Putting tools before people decreases team engagement. An emphasis on tools in Lean may dehumanize and devalue your team and their work. When a team doesn’t feel valued, they’re less likely to give their best.  

Fix : Build a culture of trust using Lean's philosophy of continuous improvement . Providing continuous feedback and opportunities for growth shows that you, as a manager, are interested in your team’s career development.

• Fix : Pay attention to the metrics to measure project success and look for improvement areas to develop your team.

Use Jira for project management

Lean accelerates your project management and keeps team agile by eliminating waste and continually streamlining processes. 

Jira can help software teams stay lean and deliver more customer value. Contextual insights empower teams to build and train muscles to continuously learn and improve their way of working. Scrum and Kanban boards give your team full visibility into what’s next so you can continuously deliver maximum output in minimal time. With Jira as the backbone of collaboration, all teams can stay in lockstep with each other and the rest of the organization.

Jira  also enables enterprises to visualize value streams. With this, your enterprise can:  

• Set up process flow automation . Give your teams time back and reduce manual work with Jira’s powerful automation engine.Align work with business needs. See how day-to-day work ladders up to the strategic objectives and keeps important stakeholders informed with ready-made agile reports. 
• Track investments . Understand what resources are being used and the time invested in any project so you can allocate efforts appropriate for the next. 
• Uncover roadblocks . Identify potential roadblocks and prevent them before they happen. 
• Deliver continuous value . With more clarity and insight, your team will be able to consistently deliver value to customers and the company as a whole.

This solution also works well for other methods such as Agile, Open DevOps , and value stream management. 

Lean methodology: frequently asked questions

What is the difference between agile and lean.

At first glance, it seems challenging to distinguish between Lean methodology vs. Agile. While both focus on efficiency and customer value, they emphasize different aspects of project management . Lean focuses on waste elimination, process, and delivering value, whereas Agile focuses on customers, mitigating uncertainty, and delivering working software.

Let’s break that down: 

• Focus : As a top-down approach, Lean is concerned with process improvements. However, Agile is a bottom-up approach where work is broken down into smaller iteration loops. 
• Product delivery : Both Lean and Agile teams work fast to deliver products as soon as possible. However, Agile is less concerned with speed than it is with feedback. So Agile teams build smaller, get feedback, and iterate. Lean is focused on improving the overall process to deliver faster.  
• Frameworks : Lean doesn't have specific frameworks, whereas Agile does. Scrum and Kanban are two Agile project management frameworks that allow you to apply Agile principles. Jira offers a Scrum template and a Kanban template to help project managers get started with the Agile methodology.

What is the difference between DevOps and Lean?

DevOps creates functional collaboration between development and operational teams, allowing for faster software delivery. This is the core philosophy of DevOps: Continually deliver value to the business through a culture of understanding and collaboration.  

In contrast, Lean’s core philosophy is to deliver value through process improvements and waste elimination. 

Lean and DevOps are customer-centric methodologies, but they differ in two main areas:

• Customer value: DevOps creates customer empathy image maps, framing business goals into customer value. Lean chooses customer value activities based on need. 
• Focus : DevOps integrates development and operations with documentation and collaboration. Lean optimizes processes, resources, and effort. 

In addition, DevOps automates mundane tasks, such as pull requests—which the DevOps beginner's guide delves more deeply into. 

If you already use DevOps, Open DevOps —an out-of-the-box DevOps foundation powered by Jira with an open-tool approach and automation—can help your Agile team focus on shipping and operating quality software and ensure the "you build it, you run it" practice associated with DevOps principles.

Can you use Agile, Lean, and DevOps at the same time?

Yes! These methodologies complement each other in their aim to deliver quality and value to customers. DevOps breaks down silos to integrate the development and operations teams. Agile encourages continuous improvement. Lean puts continuous improvement ideals into practice. 

Using all three can speed up product delivery and customer value. For example, your company might be using all three but not in concert. Lean can help improve your Agile process. And Agile’s iterative approach can help with Lean’s continuous improvement. With DevOps, you can improve your cross-collaboration. 

Using all three, your company would become a powerhouse, delivering customer value through more efficient practices. 

You can connect these methodologies using Atlassian’s suite of project management tools.

Lean principles: advancing DevOps efficiency

Explore the power of Lean Principles and DevOps in streamlining project management, enhancing efficiency, and delivering value faster.

Lean Process Improvement [What is it & How to Implement]

Eliminate waste with lean process improvement. Explore how lean process improvement techniques can work with other principles for better project management

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Lean Six Sigma Case Studies

Welcome to the Lean Six Sigma Academy’s Case Studies section! Here, you will find a collection of real-world examples of how companies have successfully implemented the Lean Six Sigma methodology to improve their business operations. Each case study includes an overview of the business challenge that was faced, the approach that was taken, the results that were achieved and feedback from the client on their experience. These case studies showcase the wide range of industries and organizations that have benefited from Lean Six Sigma, and serve as inspiration and guidance for those looking to implement the methodology in their own business. 

OE Partners

Orrcon Steel

The toyota production system.