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 Major elements of Lean Management

"Lean Management" is a holistic (ganzheitlich) concept of management, which tries to include other partial solutions which were developed mainly in Japan like "just-in-time", Kanban, TQM and Kaizen.

Lean Management, like Lean Production is striving to

- reduce the levels of hierarchy to bring management closer to the operative level,

- to strengthen teamwork and responsibility at lower levels,

- to increase the identification of the staff with the company and

- to spread the idea of Quality Management.

The Lean Management philosophy emphasizes

- customers value as highest priority

- human resources as main factor of success

- quality as primary goal

- prevention of waste

- concentration on core competences

The goals of Lean Management cannot be achieved without changes in the organisation of companies. Orientation towards the total process means that all parts of the company have to be aware of what is happening within all the company, to take responsibility for the whole process and to know how ones own work fits into the whole process.

The organisation therefore has to stop to be separated into different segments like "research and development", "production" and "marketing" but has to be organized along the whole process of work.

 Contact: wolfgang.arlt@fh-stralsund.de  Office: 1/132, Tel. (03831) 45 6961