The concept of “lean” manufacturing has been around for nearly 60 years, according to Mike Orzen, president of the management consulting firm that bears his name. But now it’s being applied to IT and Orzen is at the forefront of the movement, helping to educate companies on how to use it to improve the quality and timeliness of IT services while reducing cost and even improving employee morale.I talked with Orzen to learn more about what lean IT is all about and how organizations go about adopting it. He should know, as he’s involved with two non-profit organizations – The Shingo Prize and the Lean Enterprise Institute – that help companies adopt lean principles. He also co-authored a book on the topic, titled “Lean IT.” At its root, lean is about coming up with repeatable processes to solve problems at the root cause level. One concept is called “quality of the source,” which is the idea that you need processes to ensure things are done right the first time and that no defects are passed along the food chain.With respect to IT, Orzen says lean addresses four main areas. First is quality, whether it’s a help desk that is truly helpful or projects that deliver the functionality they promised. Second is delivery, which has to do with timeliness in terms of hitting launch dates, maintenance windows and the like. Cost is a byproduct of the first two; if you’ve got quality and delivery issues, you are guaranteed to have cost over-runs, he says.

“We’re too busy,” he says. “Because we’re still on the treadmill of firefighting and reactive business activity.”

The fourth area, which Orzen says is the driver of all the others, is morale. “When you’ve got business processes, particularly in the high-pressure environment of IT, that are struggling with quality, never delivering on time, dealing with budget overruns, the impact on morale is tremendous,” he says. “Once people are burned out and down, it’s really hard to expect them to perform at the level that’s required to support the rest of the company.”

Adopting lean IT principals first requires a commitment among leadership, ideally from both the IT and business sides of the house. In many companies, that’s not an issue because they are already employing lean principles in various areas, perhaps manufacturing or service delivery. When he asks such companies why IT hasn’t adopted lean, the answer is, “We’re too busy,” he says. “Because we’re still on the treadmill of firefighting and reactive business activity.”

To be successful, companies have to make a commitment to lean – and recognize that it’s a long-term process. “It can’t be another flavor of the month,” Orzen says. On the other hand, most organizations get measurable results within 90 days, and usually within 30 days.

And the results can be dramatic, such as the case of a global aerospace company that Orzen says saved $100,000 per year by applying lean concepts to server deployment, replacing its fragmented approach with a consistent process.

Check out the podcast to learn how the company achieved such savings and how you can apply lean concepts to your own IT organization.