Lean thinking can be best described as the process where a higher value is created without any of the waste common to manufacturing in other areas. Many will try and duplicate the lean thinking combined with manufacturing process in the same manner that was originally begun by the Toyota Corporation.
Lean thinking was designed to increase and improve the end user value while lowering the price and eliminating the waste involved. Toyota identified seven waste areas in their manufacturing and worked to lower the waste and thus to offer a higher value at a lower price. THe process is also commonly called Toyotismas well as lean thinking.
The end result has been a high level of success that was gained from the lean thinking process along with a huge amount of growth gained by using it which eventually led to an overall process examined by numerous companies and universities that have weaved the lean thinking module into their daily activities.
Lean Thinking in Education
Lean thinking in the realm of higher education can be considered taking lean thinking in its manufacturing process form that has been revamped for colleges and universities to give the student maximum value for a lowered price. Lean management and lean thinking have become a bit more common in areas related to college administration. In facets such as admission, budgeting, hiring, and facilities management, leaning thinking contributes to huge improvements. Although you will not see it widely used in universities, several have become pioneers in lean thinking, leading to its integration in other areas of university life. Even variants and applications of lean thinking have been used with the procurement of feedback from students, structures of teaching methods, and various unique academic processes. The universities that have utilized lean thinking the most and use it to the greatest degree are pioneering venues such as the St Andrews in Scotland, Cardiff University in Wales and University of Oklahoma in the United States. Various other universities have also joined the club here and these would be Winona State University and Rensselaer, which are both in the USA.
There are several differences in lean thinking as applied to higher education as opposed to lean thinking when used in the manufacturing or the business sector. In higher education, lean thinking follows along the same lines as it does in lean management in a corporation. It takes into account the differences as well by looking at all the many different structures and the means of governing that is in place in the higher education.
Universities have, at various times, been resistive to the use of lean education due to the fact it delineates the student as both a customer and a teacher and the college, acting as an employee, must do what is required to prove worth to the end user who is the student. Teachers and the administrators of the university would match the administration of a corporation, but differences do exist as visible in the form of government regulation. Also, there will be a few changes to the teaching process. All of these are taken into account yet university learning will be made up of processes which have been repeated over and over.
Because of these factors, lean education will be used to a huge degree of success. In some areas, the student will be called a customer although terminology of this nature has been met with a lot of resistance from scores of schools in questions. Generally, the term student-customer has achieved quite a bit of acceptance. There are quite a number of reasons why this is so and the term customer will be thought out as an important aspect of lean management or a form of lean education methodology. For the end user to have any value, an actual customer must exist.
The value that can be added and the shaved costs that may be passed along to the end user, the student-customer are one reason why lean education is being seen as more acceptable by many universities as well as the primary reason why it is being resisted by other universities.
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Application Of Lean Thinking To College Education Application Of Lean Thinking To College Education
Article Source: http://discussneews.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/application-of-lean-thinking-to-college-education/
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