“LCS Approved” Launched

The LCS has launched a new ‘seal of approval’ service for businesses that supply products, services, systems or technologies to organisations with lean operating systems and that are committed to developing a lean culture.

Overall Proposition

Called LCS Approved, it involves an applicant demonstrating that its product or service has a significant and positive impact on those factors that are considered to be critical to developing a lean organisation. There are 20 factors, termed Lean Enterprise Characteristic Statements, which have been developed from a range of key sources, including the ten Shingo Model principles, Liker’s 14 principles of the Toyota Way and Womack and Jones’ Five Lean Principles. The process also involves a detailed scrutiny of its features and benefits and corroboration of the owners claims by actual users.

Products and services that are awarded the two year LCS Approved licence are able to promote their status  which should provide important reassurance to potential users that their investment in supporting infrastructure will be compatible with their lean enterprise aspirations.

Development

LCS Approved has been developed, test and piloted with ActiveOps, a global leader in operations performance management, which has become the first company to have one of its products – the Workware Operations Performance Management software – awarded LCS Approved status.

The LCS will continue to refine and test the LCS Approved methodology, as well as examine its application to a range of products and services, which is likely to lead to further refinements and versions being developed to cater for a variety of market and operational environments.

Strategic Rationale

Commenting on the development LCS Director, Simon Elias, said:

“The LCS Approved initiative is a logical extension of the LCS service range and addresses the crucial question of the lean legitimacy of those products and services that are used to underpin and support operations.

The approval process aims to ensure that a product’s design and architecture embraces lean principles and systems thinking, which is critical for any services, systems or technologies used to underpin lean operational practices.

If they do not, there is a danger they not only undermine lean efforts, but could also create a barrier to lean-oriented change that many be hard to remove, thus delaying or even ending progress on the organisation’s CI journey.”

See the LCS Approved Webpages.