Interpreting the concept of 'value' within the Lean paradigm

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Author
Francis, Mark
Fisher, Ron
Thomas, Andrew J.
Date
2015-07Type
Conference paper
Publisher
Centre for Concurrent Enterprise
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The Lean paradigm (Womack & Jones, 1996) remains extremely influential on operations and
supply chain practice and research. The first two of the five ‘Lean Principles’ advanced by
Womack & Jones as a prescription for becoming Lean concern the concept of ‘value’. These
are: (1) Understand value from your customer’s perspective (2) Map the value stream.
However, the significant personal experience of the authors of this paper in applying the Lean
paradigm suggest continued ambiguity of this most fundamental concept within both the Lean
literature and practice. Our initial investigations suggest a gap in the literature on this topic,
and Lean practitioners treating the concept of ‘value’ as axiomatic. As a consequence and to
the detriment of the project concerned, Lean intervention projects in practice invariably start
at the second principle, and without any discussion, identification or consensus among the
project team concerning the actual ‘value’ that is to be mapped. Over the past three ISLs we
have presented papers that have explored and characterised the conception of ‘value’ within
the field of Logistics and Supply Chain Management generally (see Francis et al., 2014). In
this paper we now apply the content analysis method developed within the papers above
specifically to the Lean literature. Its purpose is to yield rigorous insight into how the concept
of value is conceived within this body of material, and hence provide utility to both academics
and practitioners working within this area.
Journal/conference proceeding
20th International Symposium on Logistics (ISL 2015);
Citation
Francis, M., Fisher, R. & Thomas, A. (2015) 'Interpreting the concept of 'value' within the Lean paradigm', In Pawar, K.S., Rogers, H. and Ferrari, E. (ed.s) The Proceedings of 20th International Symposium on Logistics (ISL 2015) : Reflections on Supply Chain Research and Practice. Bologna, Italy 5th – 8th July 2015. Nottingham: Centre for Concurrent Enterprise, pp. 590-599
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