Overview

Creating lean enterprise value at national and international levels represents a significant extension in the use of all three words: lean, enterprise, and value. Taking a lean enterprise approach to value creation is essential in addressing the challenges that are already emerging at the dawn of the 21st century whether they involve addressing the limitations of the air traffic management system, pioneering commercial uses of space, or finding new ways to confront international terrorism. Our goal here is to foster a more intentional approach to lean enterprise value creation at national and international levels.

Normally, government, industry, and other stakeholders are not thought of in the context of a single, national-level enterprise. Similarly, national-level initiatives aimed at eliminating waste such as government cost-cutting initiatives are rarely linked to concepts of value creation or lean capability. While there are islands of success at these levels, where we see evidence of shifting the focus to lean enterprise value creation, these are generally in spite of and viewed as a threat to existing systems and infrastructure.

Each phase of the value-creation process poses significant challenges at the national and international levels. Value identification requires reaching beyond the bounds of aerospace enterprises to take into account alternative uses of society s resources. Value propositions are rarely contained in a single, explicitly negotiated agreement, but emerge as shared understandings among a vast array of global stakeholders. Value delivery takes into account future generations, not just current actors. Just as we ve...