ABSTRACT
The customer should be the main focus of the Lean culture. This means the organization must have a way to tap the voice of the customer for each process and communicate it to the employees. The organization must develop and adopt process-focused metrics geared toward continuous improvement by management, focusing on optimizing the flow of products and/or services through the entire value stream. The value stream organization flows across technologies and departments rather than the vertical or silo approach in place at most organizations. This horizontal CI approach will provide a system-level view which will result in fewer defects, less human effort, space, capital, lead time, and at a far less cost. Lean organizations are learning organizations.
