Lean Accreditation for Small Businesses

Who Should Apply?

A company may wish to consider Small Business Accreditation if:

It is a small training company with limited resources.
It is a start-up training company that has not yet established itself.
It delivers small scale Lean training on an infrequent basis.
It is a small company that wants to deliver its own bespoke training to staff on an infrequent basis.

How is Small Business Accreditation (SBA) different from Standard Accreditation?

Knowledge test assessments are not carried out by the Lean accredited company, but by the LCS centrally
With SBA accreditation, Certificates of Lean Competency are produced and distributed by the LCS centrally.
SBA Lean accreditation has a lower accreditation licence fee and pays the LCS for testing and certification on a per unit basis.

What our clients say about us

“The primary benefits of LCS and its accreditation, as I see it, lie in enabling organisations to adopt this framework and use it to develop their own training programmes, competency, and capability. The strong connection LCS has with its historical roots and Cardiff University enhances its value. It provides a pathway for organisations to train and certify their own staff, which I think is amazing."

Brad Jeavons

Principal Consultant, Enterprise Excellence Group

"I would recommend the LCS to other organisations thinking about it because it gets you to think about your training system in a consistent way. It enables you to standardise what you're doing and it also ensures the quality of what you're doing. We're seeing that through the quality of some of our problem solvers, we really know that we're starting to change the mindset within our organisation to problem solving capability."

Ian Munday

Head of CI Technical Delivery, RS Group plc

The Stages to Becoming Small Business Accredited

The first-time accreditation process has six stages from Registration to Welcome Pack. The process enables an applicant to submit evidence that its Lean training system is capable of delivering effective Lean training that meets LCS standards.
The term 'Lean training system' is used to describe the interconnected components that are required to deliver effective Lean training to learners. It could comprise of one course or several in an academy or centre of excellence.
The accrediting process aims to ensure that these components are well established, technically robust, effectively managed, resourced and integrated.
The training system or programme is described by the applicant in an online Submission Form.

How much does it cost?

Small Business Accreditation and testing/certification fees are shown below:

Intial two year accreditation fee

£2,500

€3,000

2 year re-accreditation fee

£1,750

€2,100

Test/certification fee

£95

€115

The LCS Qualifications Framework

The LCS qualifications framework has seven levels of competency covering the spectrum of Lean knowledge and application. An organisation can start the accreditation at any level depending on how advanced their improvement programme is. While the framework requires a number of subject areas are covered at each level, there is flexibility for the organization to choose the tools, techniques and language to fit with their culture.