What is Lean? Continuous Quality Improvement Using Lean

Lean is a powerful approach to continuous quality improvement that puts your team at the center of positive change. Born from manufacturing but perfectly suited for laboratories, Lean focuses on maximizing value while eliminating waste in your daily processes. Instead of making sweeping changes from the top down, Lean empowers staff at all levels to identify problems and implement practical solutions. By mapping out workflows, spotting bottlenecks, and making small but meaningful improvements, laboratories can reduce turnaround times, cut costs, and deliver more reliable results. The beauty of Lean lies in its simplicity – it’s about making work easier and more efficient through common-sense changes, whether that’s reorganizing your workspace, streamlining test procedures, or improving communication between shifts. When everyone contributes their insights and ideas, the entire laboratory benefits from smoother operations and higher quality output.