Lean Enterprise & Process Improvement

Learn the Basics

Read a short introduction to lean approaches and tools.

In a webinar for the Service Quality Division, Mike Micklewright explores the fundamental principles of lean, the organizational culture required for success, and "must-know" secrets for adapting lean approaches across different industries.

Lean Service Design

In a Webinar offered by the Lean Enterprise Division, Joe Dager demonstrates how lean service design can change the way you think about business, helping you engage customers as co-creators and co-producers of the service experience.

Improving Patient Care in Rural Tanzania

In this Lean Enterprise Division webinar, Pat Griffith, director of quality improvement at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, presents a case study about implementing a quality system and using lean in a rural hospital laboratory in Tanzania.

Lean in the Emergency Department

In this Healthcare Update audio interview, Charley Anderson-Dean, a registered nurse at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, discusses the lean transformation of her emergency department and why lean methods are effective in healthcare.

GM Technical Problem-Solving Group Drives Excellence

Seeking to make the problem-solving process more efficient, a General Motors (GM) team turned to the same lean and Red X approaches they use to solve vehicle performance issues. Read the case study.

Combatting Emergency Department Congestion With Lean

In British Columbia, six urban hospitals that partner to serve mental health and addiction patients worked together to curb emergency department congestion.
Read the case study.

The Lean Handbook

In this handbook you will find information related to the joint lean certification program of SME, AME, The Shingo Prize, and ASQ. Use this book to enhance your understanding of the certification’s Body of Knowledge (BOK) as a whole and to give you a more holistic look at lean.

Preview a sample chapter and the full table of contents.

Lean Acres, Chapters 1 and 2

Download chapters 1 and 2 of Lean Acres: A Tale of Strategic Innovation and Improvement in a Farm-iliar Setting. The excerpt includes a pretest, foreword, first chapter "The Narrator," and second chapter "Farm-iliar Territory," as well as the book's full table of contents and index.

Also available: Lean Acres Webcast.

Keep It Simple

In an article for QP, Adil Dalal shows how ensuring a successful lean initiative is as simple as sticking to the three tenets of lean.

Lean Enterprise Division

Visit the Lean Enterprise Division for more resources and networking opportunities related to lean, including more than 30 Webinars and articles in the Division's online library.

Books

ASQ has joined the SME/AME/Shingo Prize Lean Certification Alliance and will be working closely with them to guide the strategic direction as well as the administration of the Lean Certification program.

Learn more about certification.