What Is Digital Lean?

You see there are some things we have learned here at L2L since the introduction of lean tools technology into our software. That is, L2L clients who have adopted the digital lean revolution have increased their pace of improvement ten fold. What this means is that they have increased their ability to improve through a lean approach to lean. Let me explain. What digital lean technology has done is to take the basic tenet of lean manufacturing, the elimination of waste or muda, and apply it to the lean manufacturing processes itself. You see, when you create a software feature that allows individuals to submit kaizen improvement ideas via a mobile device at the moment the idea inspires them, you eliminate the wasted time and motion of the entire paperwork process that this manual process used to entail. When you create a digital solution that allows for leadership standard work to be auto-launched directly to front line Supervisor, with digital checklists that capture data, then compiles that data into auto generated charts, you eliminate the waste of the manual system of tracking handwritten action items, transferred to a spreadsheet, posted on manually updated team board, only to all be redone the next day. When you create a digital lean process that allows for the implementation of great ideas,  then have that idea  shared sideways, instantly, to all factory sites around the world, you eliminate the need for each of those sites to learn that lesson on their own, if at all. You see, digital lean is not just about capturing lean projects like 5S, TPM, or SMED on a saved file in a shared folder somewhere, it is about incorporating these lean practices into digital workflows that interact with your employees in a symbiotic relationship so that lean practices are a part of their daily work, instead of something else to be done. The digital revolution has caught up with Lean Manufacturing and just like every major improvement in business, those companies who understand and adopt early will always outpace their competition.