Lean & Organized - at work and at home

At work I have been dealing a bit with Lean, as I work in a manufacturing company, and as a typical  woman (?) I am also a bit overly excited about organizing and storage solutions. This is pretty much the same thing - so I thought I´d write a little post about that. A short intro to Lean Manufacturing is in this infograpichs here: 

Image from leanmusing.com

image from unitherm.com

It mentiones that it is important to reduce all types of waste: like overproduction, motion, waiting, transportation, over-processing and defects. If you make more than you need that is a waste, if you move more than you need, (for instance running up and down the stairs to get something that could be kept in one floor), if you have to wait for others to finish something you waste your time, if you need to transport things over longer distances than necessary that is a waste, if you do something more fancy than necessary - does it have to be perfect and who really cares? And finally do it right the first time, if it doesn´t work you have to do it again and that is also a waste.

The Lean filosophy was developed in Japan: Doing more with less by employing 'lean thinking.' Lean manufacturing involves never ending efforts to eliminate or reduce 'muda' (Japanese for waste or any activity that consumes resources without adding value) in design, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service processes. Developed by the Toyota executive Taiichi Ohno (1912-90) during post-Second World War reconstruction period in Japan, and popularized by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones in their 1996 book 'Lean Thinking.' Also called lean production.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/lean-manufacturing.html#ixzz1zUgy4kfN

What is really common and useful both for work and at home is 5 s, see poster:

from Think Lean

Don´t you agree that this is typical things you can find on blogs everywhere? I am not alone in loving solutions on how to get more organized, Pinterest is a great source for ideas. 

Basically there are nice and fancy Japanese words in the Lean management world (Muda, Kanban, Poka-yoke and Kaizen) that goes back to what housewifes have done for 100s of years, getting their homes organized and efficient! :)

Image from Pinterest

It doesn´t take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that it is more efficient to have a tidy environment, and that it is smart to have what you need, where you need it. 

Lean - made simple! :)