I’ve been working with Lean for most of my working life, although it wasn’t always called Lean. Earlier in my career it went by names like Total Quality Management and Just-In- Time. The terminology changed, but the direction never really did. The goal was always to do work more efficiently, reduce waste, and get more value from the same resources. Whether on a factory floor, in a yard, or behind a trade counter, the focus was on improving flow and making work easier for people. That’s why Lean is still as relevant today as it ever was. What has changed is the nature of work itself, and that has changed how Lean needs to be applied.
Lean has traditionally been associated with tools such as process mapping, standard work, visual management, and continuous improvement workshops. These tools still matter. They are effective at helping businesses see waste and understand how work actually flows. But the day-to-day reality of running a business today looks nothing like it did when Lean first emerged. Administrative effort has grown significantly. Information now moves digitally rather than physically. A large proportion of waste sits not in the yard or warehouse, but in emails, spreadsheets, repeated data entry, and manual decision-making.
To stay effective, Lean has had to change how it is delivered. Modern Lean doesn’t replace traditional Lean thinking; it builds on it. The principles are the same, but the tools available to apply them have expanded. Digital systems, automation, and AI allow businesses to move beyond simply making work more efficient and instead completely remove large elements of manual work.
At its core, Lean has always been about maximising value while minimising waste. Traditionally, that meant identifying nonvalue- adding steps and improving the way necessary work was carried out. In practice, this led to clearer processes, better handovers, and heavy reliance on spreadsheets. While spreadsheets delivered genuine improvements, they also introduced a ceiling. Processes became leaner, but still depended on people manually moving data, checking information, and remembering agreed steps. As people become used to legacy systems, they are rarely revisited, even as new ways of improving workflows became available.
Modern Lean starts by asking a more fundamental question: does this work need to exist at all?
A good example of this can be seen in how small construction companies manage materials quotes and orders from builders providers. Historically, this process was very manual. Prices were gathered by phone or email, written into notebooks or spreadsheets, compared manually, and then re-entered to place orders. Costs were often allocated to projects later, requiring further checking and more data entry. Traditional Lean improvements focused on streamlining these steps, standardising how quotes were recorded and reducing errors. These changes delivered significant gains, but the core work still existed.
In a modern digital Lean setup, the same process looks very different. Supplier quote PDFs can be fed directly into an AI-enabled system. The system reads the documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) extracts the relevant details, and converts them into structured materials orders. Pricing is captured accurately, and material costs can be allocated against the related projects at time of ordering. What once required multiple people and repeated data entry now happens seamlessly in the background.
This shift doesn’t just reduce effort; it changes the nature of work. Large amounts of basic, repetitive activity such as keying data and copying information between systems are removed. The role of admin evolves from operational processing to supervision and control. One person can oversee multiple automated flows, monitoring for exceptions and stepping in only where an experienced person’s judgement is needed. A little like self-service checkouts in our supermarkets, technology handles routine work while staff focus on resolving issues and adding value.
This is the real distinction between traditional Lean and modern Lean. Traditional Lean improves how work is done and delivers incremental gains. Modern Lean redesigns the system so unnecessary work disappears altogether, while also adding new capability. In this example, projects gain real-time visibility of committed costs, purchasing data becomes more accurate, and reporting improves without adding extra workload.
Lean is no longer just about doing things better; it’s about doing less work. The principles that shaped Lean still hold true, but modern tools have opened up a new frontier in what improvement looks like. By combining Lean thinking with digital and automation, businesses can remove work at the source and allow people to focus on what really matters. That’s where Lean is headed next.
For further information contact John O’Shanahan at joshanahan@leanbpi.ie, ph. 087 7444 887 or visit www.leanbpi.ie.
