Balance Operational and Financial Objectives. Balance Lean with TOC.

Lean Thinking is a common approach to optimizing complex manufacturing operations and increasing revenues. The core idea behind Lean is to minimize waste within a system while maintaining the same level of productivity.

Theory of Constraints optimizes production based on the constraint in the system, leading to greater production, and consequently, greater revenue. By contrast, Lean focuses on eliminating waste, which leads to cost savings. Both methods have their merits. However, often combining principles from both Lean and Theory of Constraints and applying them to your business yields the highest impact.

Our proprietary Theory of Constraints/Lean/Six Sigma (TLS) framework uses essential principles from both Lean and Theory of Constraints to elevate our clients’ productivity and profitability.

Those who are familiar with the manufacturing industry for the last 20 or 30 years know about continuous improvement mainly through Lean. Given the success of Toyota with lean manufacturing back in the 70s, other companies adopted lean thinking from chip makers to financial services.
Lean has been popular because it helps companies to do two things.

• First, it looks at the fulfillment process from the perspective of value delivered to the customer. This is often referred to as a “value stream”.
• Second, it focuses companies on eliminating waste. Lean identifies the multiple types of waste which are currently plaguing an organization. If anything doesn’t add value to the customer, it’s disposed of.