Lean Six Sigma

Waste in Laboratories

Published by Tom Reynolds in Lean Laboratory on January 17, 2019

Laboratories are not the same as manufacturing environments so do the standard Lean ‘Wastes’ even apply in Labs? BSM can show you the "right" wastes to tackle to unlock the performance of your testing laboratory.

Improving Lab Performance with Six Sigma

Published by Andrew Harte in Lean Laboratory on September 4, 2018

Do you want to reduce lead times while improving productivity in your QC testing laboratory? Read the following case study to find out how.

Lean Organisation for Lean Programmes

Published by Pat Sheehan in Lean Programs on April 11, 2018

You’re a site leader three months into your Lean Programme and on the face of it things are going well but you’ve got doubts that the organisation structure is supporting your lean journey in the way you’d want.

Lean Thinking for Laboratories

Published by Tom Reynolds in Lean Laboratory, Lean R&D on May 5, 2011

While it might sound like some sort of fad diet, “lean” in the context of business improvement refers to a specific methodology that originated in the Japanese motor industry toward the end of the 1980s. Over the decades, this lean philosophy has been successfully adopted by many companies across a broad spectrum of industries and, more recently, lean thinking has filtered into laboratories. The focus of a lean laboratory is to test samples in the most efficient way possible in terms of cost, or speed, or both. Although most of the key principles of lean apply in labs, the specific challenges facing laboratories require significant adaptation of standard lean tools.