© Petr Vaclavek / Shutterstock.com LEAN MANUFACTURING 17 Dr. Stephen McGrath Teva Pharmaceuticals Ireland (TPI) Lean, Six Sigma, people and organisations Organisations are constantly striving to drive down costs while maintaining the quality of their products and services. In recent years, much has been written in both the academic and practitioner literature on the application of Lean principles for the elimination of waste and focusing of energies on value-creating activities. In theory, the adoption of Lean principles by an organisation has the potential to provide the dual pay-off of increasing customer satisfaction while reducing cost. The bottom-line benefit of a successful Lean transformation process to an organisation is therefore obvious and the reported success stories for true Lean transformations are impressive. Quoted figures such as 90% reductions in inventory coupled with a 50% increase in productivity capture the attention and imagination of managers 1 . However, such success stories remain elusive with a success rate of 10% or less being widely reported in the literature 1-4 . This article explores factors influencing Lean transformation initiatives in organisations. Lean thinking books ‘The machine that changed the world’ 5 and ‘Lean Thinking’ 6 . The origin of Lean thinking is attributed to the Toyota Production The central tenet of Lean thinking is the elimination of waste, where System (TPS) and was popularised in the western business lore by the waste is defined as anything that increases cost without adding value 42 European Pharmaceutical Review VOLUME 19 ISSUE 4 2014