Increasingly, global competition requires that manufacturing companies improve their production efficiencies or face extinction. And indeed, by adopting Toyota's Lean System, companies have achieved tremendous gains in productivity and profits by removing the waste, or muda, from their production processes. Many firms have realized the same improvements by applying lean principles to their critical business processes.

However, creating a lean business process is only half the battle against muda. The knowledge workers involved in these processes must also develop lean work habits. A firm that only creates a lean process without creating lean work habits is like a sprinter with a track spike on one foot and an army boot on the other -- and that's a sure way to lose the race to satisfy the customer.

Our work with a major manufacturing firm illustrates the difference between a lean process and lean work habits. The labs were immaculate -- a model of 5S implementation -- but the lab manager's office was a mess: inventory was disorganized and critical information was difficult to retrieve.

Our company has taught lean work habits to a variety of manufacturing firms, including Toyota, over the past several years. These firms have realized increased employee efficiency, improved worker response time and increased customer satisfaction. Most significantly, by reducing the muda endemic in most knowledge workers' behavior, employees have gained nearly 10 hours per week for work that creates customer value.

Lean work habits are critical for knowledge workers, because the multiple value streams flowing through them create a constant tension. Without lean habits to guide their work, the critical flow of information in the value stream clogs up. Think of the information bottlenecks in the form of backlogs on their desks, or the hundreds of unanswered email in their inboxes. Think of the enforced waiting throughout a department when decision-makers read but don't act upon a request. Think unnecessary motion of managers searching for documents amidst the masses of paper piled on their desks. Each of these wastes undermines the gains made by any improvements in the design of a company's business processes.

And these wastes can be catastrophic: in 1999, NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in orbit due to a miscommunication regarding English and metric units. A task force found that a simple, unanswered email about the correct measurement units led to disaster. The total loss to NASA: $327 million.

In response to these problems, we have developed the following principles that create lean knowledge workers and improve the flow of the value stream:

Principle #1: Screening Muda

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