Lean for education

Introduction

While the quality improvement method known as "Lean" might call to mind images of trimming down an organization, by firing "unnecessary" workers and reducing expenditures, it is important to note at the onset of this paper that these are misconceptions. A "Lean" organization does not necessarily reflect these characteristics. Certainly, as we will see below, in education, the approach has been pushed well beyond this limited perspective alone. Rather, a Lean organization can be defined as one that supports its people (workers) as they identify, solve problems and address barriers to achieving high quality outcomes that are consistent with its mission.

A Lean organization also constantly learns about and improves its work to deliver maximum value to those receiving the service or product. In education systems, these "clients" are students and stakeholders in society writ large . As such, Lean offers a set of concepts, principles and tools used to create and deliver the greatest value from the customer's perspective while consuming the fewest resources by engaging people in continuous problem solving.

For those in education who are new to the method, it is easy to be distracted by the tools for problem identification and problem solving and to reduce the method to a toolkit. However, Lean is almost as much about relationships (between providers of services and those receiving them, and between managers and front-line workers) and mindsets, as it is about tools and techniques (Emiliani, 2005). In particular, Lean posits that a tightly coupled relationship between providers of and those who receive those services is essential to understanding what value means and for determining how best to deliver it. In education, the providers could be school district systems or individual schools that deliver services and students, whereas the service consumers are parents and members of the larger society who receive them.

While this seems intuitive, determining who precisely constitutes the "customer" (the recipient of the service) in education can be problematic. Many different stakeholders benefit from the provision of education, creating, in effect, a "chain of users". Individual students, families and communities, for example, all benefit from the provision of education, and "value" will take on a slightly different meaning for each stakeholder group.

Despite these complications, Lean thinking can inform...