Frequently asked questions about lean

Consultancy

What is Lean?

Lean is the methodology for radically improving processes. The ultimate goal is to serve customers optimally with minimum effort and cost. Think about it: if you yourself are a customer, don't you also expect the best possible service, whether at the hospital, the supermarket, or when ordering online?

With Lean , we analyze how to get your service or product to the customer as smartly, quickly and efficiently as possible. It's about eliminating any waste and continuously adding value.

When we talk about Lean , we refer to powerful Lean principles, proven methods and practical techniques that enable you and your team to demonstrably improve your processes - and thus your daily work.

What is a Lean transformation?

A Lean transformation is a fundamental tilt of your entire organization from the current situation to an optimally desired future. It goes beyond just rearranging; it means that customer value and continuous improvement become the absolute red thread through every fiber of the organization.

This transformation requires learning a new way of thinking and acting. It is not a matter of following a set roadmap, but of deeply addressing crucial questions about the purpose, process and people within your organization.

Wondering how this works? The video below from our Lean Global Network describes the Lean Transformation Model, clearly explained by Lean veteran John Shook. Discover the essence of sustainable change!

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Want to learn more about how we at Lean Management Institute work with the Lean Transformation Model? Then read on here.

What is a Lean wave?

The Lean Wave is the way to make an immediate impact with Lean! Every week (or two weeks) you receive a short, focused training on a Lean theme (1 to 2 hours). The unique thing is that you immediately (often the same day!) put the acquired knowledge into practice, under the personal guidance of an experienced coach. This ensures fast results and sustainable implementation.

Learn more about our unique Lean Wave approach and how it can transform your organization.

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What is the difference between Lean, Agile and Scrum?

Agile, Lean and Scrum. These are terms you hear more and more in the business world, but what exactly do they mean? And what are the differences? While all three focus on efficiency, flexibility and delivering value, each has a unique approach.

Explore the details of these management philosophies and methods to understand which approach best suits your organization:

"What's the difference between Lean, Agile and Scrum."

Industries

How do you apply Lean in the healthcare sector?

Read more about this on our Lean in care page.

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How do you apply Lean in education?

Read more about this on our Lean in education page.

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Certification

Within how many months should I get certified?

That's up to you. After taking the course, you are free to decide whether to go up for certification and, if so, how soon. Certification consists of a theoretical and a practical part. Because you have already had your theory during the training, we advise you to schedule your theory exam as soon as possible after your last training day. For your practical exam, we advise you to complete your practical assignment and get certified within six months of completing the training. Read more about certification here.

How can I apply for certification?

If you would like more information or to apply for certification, please visit this page and apply directly. Did you know that there is also a page with all relevant information for participants in our courses?

How long will my Lean certificate remain valid?

If you pass your Lean Yellow Belt , Green Belt, Black Belt or Master Black Belt , we will issue you with a certificate that is valid indefinitely. There is no end date to the certificate's validity.

When did I pass my course?

Good news: the vast majority of our candidates pass in one sitting! If you take Lean seriously and prepare well, you have every chance of passing your certification.

Your certification consists of a theory part and a practical part, each of which must be assessed with at least a 5.5. Both parts count equally, with a weighting of 50:50. Suppose you obtain a 7 for theory and a 9 for your practical assignment, your final grade will be an 8.

When the examiner - always an experienced senior trainer/consultant - judges that you meet all the requirements, you have passed! (For the Master Black Belt , there are always two examiners present.)

Should it occur that you do not immediately meet all the requirements or that there is doubt about specific components, the examination board will assess the situation and make a final decision. Should this result in a 'fail' verdict, you will be entitled to a retake. Moreover, the examiner will give you concrete feedback and clearly indicate what is needed to still be successful. Incompleteness, such as missing an 'end-to-end' value stream analysis, for example, may lead to additional clarification, but does not necessarily mean you will fail immediately.

Only a small minority need a retake. This underlines our confidence in our courses and your commitment!

Is there a cost associated with certification?

Yes, certification is optional and is not included in the price of the training. Certification can be purchased separately or in combination with a coaching ticket. On the training page of the Lean Belt courses you can read more about the options and associated fees.

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Lean

What is 5S?

5S is a Lean tools to organize your workplace as efficiently as possible. Here you can read more about this Lean tool. You can also read more about 5S and several examples of how it is used in practice.

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What is Lean Management?

Lean management is managing process improvements through Lean. This article explains what is Lean as well as the five Lean Management principles.

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What is Lean?

With Lean , we analyze how to get your service or product to the customer as smartly, quickly and efficiently as possible. It's about eliminating any waste and continuously adding value.

What is the history of Lean?

The term Lean was first used by our founders Jim Womack and Dan Jones in the late 1980s, in their research on the automotive industry conducted out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in the book "The Machine That Changed the World."

This study showed that Toyota had superior competitiveness and that this could be explained by their specific way of conducting business. Toyota developed the Lean methodology based on the Toyota Business System. They combined ideas that had long lived within Toyota (such as Jidoka and Just-in-Time JIT) with ideas developed by other pioneers (such as the Plan, Do, Check, Act/adjust PDCA cycle, standardization and the Training Within Industry (TWI) program.

The 5 Lean principles may have their roots in Toyota's factories in Japan, but today the Lean method has become an alternative, superior approach to work - no matter what the work is (manufacturing, office), the industry or the size of the organization.

Founders of the Lean methodology -Jim Womack (left) and Dan Jones (right)

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What is a Lean transformation?

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Want to learn more about how we at Lean Management Institute work with the Lean Transformation Model? Then read on here.

What is the difference between Lean, Agile and Scrum?

Explore the details of these management philosophies and methods to understand which approach best suits your organization:

"What's the difference between Lean, Agile and Scrum."

What is customer value within Lean?

Customer value basically means: what does your customer find valuable and is your customer willing to pay an appropriate price for it. It is wise to talk to customers about what they find valuable about your product and/or service. If your product or service helps a customer and solves his or her problem, then your organization has a right to exist. Your organization probably wouldn't exist if no one found your products or services valuable and wanted to spend money on them. Within Lean , customer value is an important concept: it looks at all the steps in a process and asks the question: does this step add value (is this a value-adding or value-creating activity?) for our customers or not? If the answer is no, then the next question is: can we skip or eliminate this step? And what should we do to do that?

Determining customer value is not always so easy, because customers often value different things, or it depends on the situation. But by asking the question you get a better understanding of which steps in a process are valuable to the customer and which steps are not. Customer value is also expressed in SQDC or Safety, Quality, Delivery and Cost. Customers want a safe product, of a certain quality, at a certain time and for an appropriate price. This helps to see more precisely what is a valuable step or not, or what you need to work on to create more or better customer value.

Value is therefore the first principle of the five Lean principles.

What can I do with Lean in my daily work?

A lot! The beauty of Lean is that you can start applying it both very big and very small. Obviously, the answer to this question depends on your personal situation, but we try to give you some guidance in this article (at the bottom of the article).

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What are the 3Ps?

To improve (or transform), an organization must focus on 3 Ps: Purpose, Process, People.

Purpose: What is the purpose of our organization? What need in society can we meet? In other words, what is customer value?
Process (Process): How can we continuously improve? In other words: designing and managing efficient processes.
People (People): How can we respect everyone by making their work meaningful, and how can we actively engage and develop everyone?

Aligning purpose, process and people is the central task of management.

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What are the five lean principles?

Daniel (Dan) Jones and James P. (Jim) Womack are the founders of Lean and developed the Lean management theory that revolves around five Lean principles. They studied various companies in the automotive industry for five years and saw the huge differences between Toyota and other companies. They set out to find what made Toyota so successful and described it in their books The Machine That Changed The World and Lean Thinking. The five Lean principles guide organizations in any industry that use Lean as a method for continuous improvement.

The five Lean principles are:

Define value from a customer perspective. Customer value thus gives direction in what you look at in the processes: what is value-added and what is not?
Identify how the value stream or streams (value streams) run in your organization. That is, map all your process steps by product family and eliminate (the biggest) wastes (i.e., non-value-added activities) in your processes.
Create flow whenever possible, letting the service or product flow through your organization in the shortest possible lead time. Make sure products or services flow smoothly to the customer, without interruptions, by executing the value-creating steps in quick succession.
From push to pull: start delivering something only when there is customer demand and do not create unnecessary inventory. After all, this costs money and often comes at the expense of your flexibility and quality.
Strive for perfection or keep improving continuously, often you can already improve a lot by removing the three biggest wastes from your process. AND once that's succeeded you can tackle the next wastes. So you improve in several steps, not trying to achieve the perfect process all at once: this prevents your beautiful plans from becoming too complex to implement quickly. As an ideal, you try to achieve a situation where value is created for the customer without waste.

Want to know more about what is Lean? Then read this article.

What are the benefits of Lean?

There are numerous benefits to be gained from Lean. A small summary.

Everyone can participate in improving
You learn more and more how to do processes and your own work smarter
Processes run easier and faster
Mistakes are not bad, but an opportunity to learn
You do more meaningful work, and don't spend your time on unnecessary things (waste)
For your customers, quality and delivery reliability improve
Your customers are therefore happier with you and the work you do
So work becomes (even) more fun for you and your colleagues!

If you want to know more about what is Lean, read this article.

Training courses

How and when should I pay for my education?

You will receive the invoice for your training one month before it begins, with a standard payment period of two weeks.

Do you have specific billing requirements, such as a PO number, cost center or a different payment term? Please communicate these to us no later than 5 weeks before the start of your training. This way we can ensure that everything is processed in a timely and correct manner.

Please contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss your specific requirements.

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I want to be certified for my training. How does this work?

Certification consists of a theory and a practical part. You take both separately. You can read more about how certification works on our certification page and our page specifically for participants in our courses.

Is coaching on my improvement project included in my training?

Accelerate your success and maximize the impact of your Lean projects with personal coaching!

Although coaching is not included as standard in the training fee, we offer the option to purchase it through a coaching strip card.

Experience shows that participants who are coached by our experiencedMaster) Black Belts complete their projects significantly faster and with measurably greater impact and results. It is therefore a very smart investment in both yourself and the successful completion of your project, which also brings you closer to practical certification.

Want to learn more about the features and benefits of our coaching strip cards? Then visit the specific training pages or the participant information page. There you will find all the details to get started right away!

Is there parking available at the training site?

We have a parking lot behind our building and there is also plenty of free parking on the street. Charging stations are available at both locations.

Is lunch included during the training day?

Coffee, tea, snacks and lunch will be arranged for you on your training day. If you have dietary requirements, please let us know in advance so we can take them into account.

Can I apply for STAP funding for your courses?

Unfortunately, this is not possible. We are not a STAP recognized training institute in the training register.

Can I cancel my registration for a course?

It depends on your specific situation. Read more about our cancellation policy here. You can also contact us to present your situation to us, we are happy to think along with you!

Can I qualify for VAT exemption?

Unfortunately, you can't. We are unfortunately required to charge a 21% VAT rate on all our training and services.

Do I need to have taken a preliminary course (e.g. Lean Green Belt ) before taking the Lean Black Belt course?

To participate in this program, you should already be familiar with various techniques for achieving basic stability and structured problem solving, at the level of the Lean Green Belt , so preferably you have completed a Lean Green Belt training or something similar. If you are in doubt whether the Lean Black Belt suits your current level and experience and educational background, please feel free to contact us!

At what location will the training be held?

We provide our open enrollment training in our office building in Zeist at Prins Hendriklaan 35. We have several training rooms and in beautiful office villa in the woods of Zeist. We also provide in-company training. These are customized courses where we agree with the customer on the desired location where we will provide the training.

Do you also provide customized in-company training?

Yes, we work a lot with customized training programs for our clients (starting from 6 participants). You can read more about examples of customized programs on our website.

We can also provide all Lean belt training courses in-company specifically for your company. We would love to spar with you about your specific issue so feel free to contact us!

When will I receive the study materials for my course?

Study materials will be handed out during the first day of class.

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What is a Lean wave?

Learn more about our unique Lean Wave approach and how it can transform your organization.

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What is included in the training price?

The price of our open enrollment trainings includes the training days, all educational materials (handouts and books), lunches, parking and accommodation at our beautiful training location in the woods of Zeist. The price excludes certification and coaching and also excludes 21% VAT.

Supplementary:

Possibility of catch-up session in case of absence (in principle free of charge in regular open training sessions)
Free access to articles on Planet Lean
Free participation in the annual Lean Global Connection (online conference)

What are the start and end times of the training days?

Each training day starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. at the latest.

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Which Lean best suits me: Lean Yellow belt, Green belt or Black belt?

If you just want to get acquainted with Lean, a kind of Lean introductory training, then we recommend taking the Lean Yellow Belt training . You will then know what Lean is, what the basic ideas are and what you could start doing with it.

If you want to get started with improvement projects and Lean methodologies in your own team, then the Lean Green Belt training is an appropriate course.

If you also want to implement improvement projects that are cross-team and involve multiple teams and start doing that in a more project-based manner as well, then the Lean Black Belt course is a good choice.

Have you already looked at our decision aid? If you still have questions or would like advice, please feel free to contact us!

Is there a cost associated with certification?

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Are your courses accredited or quality-marked?

The Lean Management Institute is part of the Lean Global Network. More about this network, founded by the founders of Lean -Womack&Jones- can be found here. We are accredited by the Lean Global Network. You can't get closer to the source!

In addition, our Master Black Belt Lean Postgraduate Program is accredited by the European Union and the Universitat Polytechnic de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona.

Finally, we work extensively with the Nyenrode Lean Institute, these are under the accreditation of Nyenrode (including EQUIS/EFMD) and Ministry of Education.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Stay tuned!