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With public resources at an all-time low and demand increasing for better services, the public procurement function clearly needs to do more with less. Lean thinking provides an approach to do just that, while providing customers exactly what they want, when they want it.
Lean thinking encompasses tools and techniques to eliminate waste, along with goals and related process measures to monitor results, and standardized process improvement efforts. More importantly, lean thinking is a belief system for managing processes that focuses on adding value from the customer's perspective. Lean thinkers are big-picture thinkers at heart and are constantly looking for new and improved ways to meet long-term strategic objectives of the organizations they serve. Lean thinking as an overall approach may offer a sustainable solution to the ever-increasing challenges associated with public procurement.
Lean thinking can trace its roots to automotive pioneer Henry Ford, who, in the early 1900s, developed a production system focused on high output, continually optimized workflow and elimination of waste. After World War II, Toyota engineers Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo built on Ford's earlier work and developed what is known as the Toyota Production System. While Ford focused on producing millions of Model T cars at dozens of assembly plants around the world in exactly the same fashion, Ohno and Shingo created a series of production processes that were flexible, right-sized and capable of quick changeovers. Their processes were capable of efficiently producing small batches of a variety of different automobile models, just in time,...