The lean enterprise

The Japanese automotive industry is based around principles of 'lean thinki ng', and attaches great importance to reducing waste and focusing on chose activities which add value for the customer. There has recently been intere st in applying similar principles in service industry environments, includi ng communications providers. This paper discusses the application of lean p rinciples to BT, and describes some of the lean tools and techniques that a re being used to transform BT. These include value stream analysis, a tool for exposing waste, and root cause analysis, which is a method for pursuing perfection. The use of new technologies as enablers for lean practice is a lso discussed.