Lean Education Standards

Educational courses and certification programs for Lean are all over the place. There are no generally accepted Lean education standards.

It’s ironic how a program focused on reducing waste has evolved into such uncontrolled confusion:

• Why does everyone waste time determining which concepts and tools should be taught to employees?
• Why are these charlatans running around treating Lean education as just an immersion into speaking Japanese?
• Who are these crazy people claiming it’s easy to change your organization’s culture?

For this article, I’ll stick to a standard Lean Transformation program. I will focus on the needs of those seeking to make the cultural transformation – the difficult path to creating a sustainable organization.

I won’t muddy the waters with Lean Six Sigma, Lean Sigma, Toyota stuff, or some other derivative. In addition, I will not be supporting anyone seeking to cause chaos with some fast cost-cutting shenanigans. I will not be giving away a short list of magic bullets or a long list of a million foreign words.

A Solid Framework

Given an immense body of knowledge, you cannot and do not need to, provide complete educational coverage to every person helping with a Lean Transformation. But, you do need to provide education to everyone and segment which concepts, terms, and problem-solving tools should be taught to people, based on their role in your Lean Transformation.

There are no “official” levels of knowledge for people working on a Lean Transformation. However, there is a common sense approach used by many organizations.

This common sense approach defines standards for education and the roles people will perform on Lean projects and other events. This widely used approach segments Lean education standards and the corresponding roles into the following:

• Apprentice: provide subject matter expertise and support projects, kaizen blitz events, and continuous improvement activities
• Practitioner: manage projects, lead value stream mapping sessions, and facilitate kaizen blitz events
• Expert: lead major projects, address complex problems, and advise project teams
• Master: establish standards, provide expert advice on overall program management, and coach problem solvers
• Champion: sponsor projects, ensure resources, and communicate the progress toward creating a sustainable organization

Of course, there is room at the margins. An organization might ask more, or less, from any role. This would simply mean more, or less, education would be required to succeed at the assignment.

Knowledge Needs

Given the 5 Lean roles, let’s turn our attention to the education required for each role.

Warning: we are now at the point with a very high risk of aggravating every Lean enthusiast who believes they have it figured out!

Those without a desire to learn – should stop reading now.

For those with the courage to continue, brace yourself and get ready to learn.

The balance of this article will explore the body of knowledge which, our research and experience demonstrate, should be included in the curriculum for each level.

For an expanded look into each of the 5 Lean roles, you can find the original article here. This article was written by Mike Loughrin for use by Transformance Advisors.