Lean IT

Information Technology / Information Systems are something of a controversial tool to some Lean / CI practitioners, because in the past they tended to drive non-value added practices and worked against lean techniques such as kanban and visual management. That was the old world. In today’s world, many ERP systems are designed to not only avoid working against lean, but are a key tool in scaling lean from a model-cell scale to an enterprise scale or even supply chain scale. Here’s a Shingo Prize winning resource that discusses ways to leverage IT in a Continuous Improvement program: