Explain what is lean project and describe the process.

Thanks for sharing with us your experience in financial sector. Do you consider any lean projects in your organization? (Here are some information about me and the company. My title: VP of Operations, Company: Scarlet Group of Companies, www.scarletsecurity.ca, Issues: uniforms, recruiting, internal processes, acquisitions of new companies across Canada)
Below is brief summary about lean approach.
Any lean process should start with revising current state/flow stream, identify wastes using value stream mapping and then build future state with new value stream (process without waste). Waste was defined in Kyle B. Stone (2010) as: “any human activity or process which absorbs resources but creates no value (Womack & Jones, 1996, p. 15)”.
Revising process flow should be continued to reach a perfection stage were full process is with zero waste.
Waste can include different aspects like:
1- Over production: products produced prior their requirement which results in large amount of stocks in specific stations/ stages.
2- Waiting: delay in process due to delay of upstream deliverables.
3- Transportation: non added value movement of product.
4- Over-processing: excessive material or resources consumed.
5- Defects: defected products resulted from the process.
The best practice to identify all of these wastes and to come up with new flow stream/ process free of waste is by holding KAIZEN event.