Terry had been using lean techniques to improve his company for quite a while now. He’d held kaizen events, reduced inventory, provided training for his employees, and was quite pleased with the progress his organization had made.

However, he felt it was time move beyond this type of transformation—which was to provide his products and services more efficiently and effectively. While Terry and his organization were busy reducing nonvalue-added activities and increasing efficiencies, his competitors were busy rolling out an improved product by adding more value to it. He wanted his organization to be more innovative and constantly seek ways to improve or augment solutions for customers. Immediately, Apple came to mind; he wanted his people to exceed clients’ expectations by adding more value than expected. He had to get his organization to eliminate not only nonvalue-added work, but also act in ways that would significantly benefit clients’ businesses.

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