Revision as of 08:02, 19 March 2022

Developed by Rani Abdul Karim Omar

Lean project management takes into account the lean principles and applies them to project management. Lean is a philosophy that has the aim to systematically elements waste and add more value. Lean covers a set of tools and techniques that allows companies in almost all areas to streamline their process. Projects are subject to three main constraints which are scoop, budget, and time. Lean project management's central objective is to make projects run more efficiently and to deliver better outcomes. Another reason why it is essential is that it provides a lot of other advantages such as the following:

• Increased innovation: Enhance the inventiveness of the project
• Eliminating waste: All non-value-adding process is seen as waste and having a lean approach to the project management aims to minimize all physical waste and non-value-adding times between the steps.
• Improves customer service: With Lean Project management, you always have the customer in focus and deliver what the customer needs.
• Increased quality: By minimizing waste any defects are getting discovered early with the help of quality checks or control.

No matter if the project objectives serve internal or external stakeholders, can Lean project management simplify the different steps in the project and establish a better efficient project group.

History

Before the 19th Century: the end-to-end approach

Before the 19th Century, the idea of a production process wasn't introduced to the modern world. By looking from a process point of view all the needed tasks got completed by the end-to-end approach. Business activities like developing, constructing, selling, and distributing the products were completed sequentially for each sale - It can be compared to a small startup business of today. As an example, if a person wanted to buy a shoe, he had to go to the local shoemaker and get a custom-made pair. the shoemaker will thereafter measure the foot, discussing with the customer what material the shoe has to be, and after discussing a price and date to which the shoe has to be picked up.

1900-1927: Henry Ford and the introduction to Flow production.

Following the industrial revolution, and with the development of machines and assembly lines, was Henry Ford the first person to successfully design a complete production process with the philosophy of "flow". Henry Ford was the owner of Ford Motors Company, and with the invention of the Model T car, sold from 1903 to 1927, was it one of the first cars that the average consumer actually could afford.

Henry Ford took the ideas of process standardization, management planning, and mass production and implemented them into the manufacturing of the Model T. By starting with the raw materials in a moving assembly line and ending with a Finished assembled Model T car, the overall cost and production time were reduced drastically. This concept by breaking down the process into sequence steps, using standardized machines, and assembling the components was the building locks that later resulted in lean manufacturing and a break from the early shop practices.

1930-1980: Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System

In Japan, following World War II and two atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the country was in an economic crisis with shortages and inflation. The founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, Kiichiro Toyoda, and the Japanese industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno started to implement a Pull strategy in their production lines, where the manufacturing of a car model first started when the customer made the purchase. This idea was in contrast to the Push strategy, where the manufacturer will produce as many products as possible and expect the customer will purchase them later on. This resulted that the cost associated with storage being minimized. Toyoda observed the circumstances of Ford Motor Company in the 1930s, and it appeared to them that with a series of small innovations and creations would it be possible to provide a more efficient and continuity process flow. By reinventing Henry Ford's initial ideas they created the Toyota Production System (TPS).

This system became a philosophy that shifted the focus from particular machines and their utilization to the value-creating flow and eliminating waste. They develop a set of tools that allowed them to minimize the non-value-adding activities, manufacture the actual volume needed, implement self-monitoring devices to provide the right quality, lining the machines up in process sequence. With the help of all these initiatives and more, it resulted in a shorter lead time for the customers, low cost, high variety, and high quality.

1990-Pressent: Lean Manufacturing

In 1990 did Toyota become the best-selling car manufacturer in the United State of America, and had one of the largest market shares in the world. This success has made a huge demand for knowledge about the Toyota way, as it was also called at the time. There is afterward been writing a lot of books and papers investigating the matter, and also in the early 1990’s the word Lean was introduced as another name for TPS.As the Lean Philosophy continues to spread across the world, companies are adapting the tools and principles and developing their own version of Lean. An example could be one of the biggest companies in Denmark Novo Nordisk with their version they call CLEAN (standing for Current LEAN) or the danish Meditech company Radiometer Medical with their version Danaher Business Systems (DBS). Today is Lean concepts also used in other areas than manufacturing, Lean thinking is used in logistics and distribution, services, retail, healthcare, construction, and also in Project Management.

How to use Lean Project management?

When using Lean project management, the focus is on minimizing as much waste as possible and creating a corporate culture that adapts these principles to be more effective. Lean Project management has five main principles.

1 Identify value

The first principle is about identifying the value of the product, or service. This step can be completed by recognizing the project's stakeholders or the with help of stakeholder management. When a project is formed can the key deliverables be for internal stakeholders, or it can be for external stakeholders. An example of an internal stakeholder could be a district director that has a stake in the project's key deliverables and is a shareholder of the project. on the other hand, an external stakeholder could be a customer that purchases the product or service. The external stakeholder is not directly involved with a company but is impacted by the activities, like the quality of the product. When the stakeholder is identified, and the knowledge of who has a stake in the project key deliveries is comprehended, their can better be decide how to make it more valuable.

2. Map the value flow

The second principle in Lean project management is about developing a Value stream mapping or VSM. Basically, a VSM is a tool, originally used by Toyota, to create an overview of all the value-adding, and non-value-adding processes. VSM is a visual tool that applies diagrams of the current flow and of the ideal flow from the begging of the project to its fulfillment. The figure below shows how a VSM is made. As mentored before, Lean is about eliminating waste in the process flow, and by comparing the two VSM, the one of the current flow and one of the ideal flow, the waste can be recognized for each project management step to increase the efficiency. When Toyota created the VSM, they grouped waste into three types they called Muda, Mura, and Muri.

MUDA - Uselessness

Muda is the Japanese word for uselessness and is often the one with the most focus. For each process step under the manufacturing of a product, we create some value the customer is willing to buy. When talking about Muda, there are two types of Muda, normally called Muda Type 1 and Muda type 2. Muda Type 1: All activities that do not directly add value to the product but are necessary for the customer. An example of this could be quality control or safety testing of a product.

Muda Type 2: All activities that do not add value to the product and are not necessary for the customer. In general, all Muda Type 2 shall be eliminated. This type is divided into seven categories of waste.

3.