Lean consulting or Lean manufacturing consulting is a field of management and operations consulting which specializes in the application of lean manufacturing principles, methods and techniques in order to achieve greater efficiencies, improved cost position, and a competitive advantage over competitors. Many of the principles are derived from the Toyota manufacturing system which originated in Japan in the eighties and operations management concepts. Lean consulting is usually undertaken by consultants which are specialists in this specific area and that have mastered many of the lean concepts within manufacturing, service industry, supply chain management and strategy and operations re-engineering.
The consulting engagement is very similar to strategy and other management consulting including the frameworks used. . It usually starts with a walk through and current state analysis of operations or the focus area of the consulting engagement including forming the lean consulting team working on the engagement.
The next step in the process is to draft the objectives, improvement strategy, goals and future state of the operation in question. This can also be aided by using value stream mapping, where the process or supply chain in question can be viewed as a value stream where raw materials move through he different steps in the process which add value to these to become finish goods. Once this has been done the consultants will collate information gathered from different source inside and outside of the business to form an action plan for management and the focus areas to reach their goals.
The consulting style is very similar to that of operations consultants, the only difference is that Lean consultants tend to have a greater depth of knowledge in lean manufacturing and lean concepts rather than all rounded operations expertise.
Refer to our Operations consulting page for more information about consulting.
leanmanufacture.net is a web resource and blog style website where you can find out more about lean manufacturing, operations management and business strategy from concepts and theory to real life applications which will help you achieve your operations goals and objectives.