The concept of “Lean” first took hold in the manufacturing industry. The concept was revolutionary in looking at the manufacturing process in a different light. This concept introduced almost a century ago can significantly help your online business productivity.

From the industrial revolution in into the 1920’s manufacturers sought to increase industrial output while decreasing labor costs. Perhaps Henry Ford is best known for this with the introduction of the automobile production line with revolutionary increases in efficiency.

Starting in the 1950s these concepts took hold in Japan in their Automobile manufacturing process. With the help of American experts such as W Edwards Deming the Japanese revolutionized the auto industry with brands such as Toyota taking market share from the major US auto manufacturers from 1970s thorough today.

The concept of Lean looks closely at all processes involved with making a product or performing a business service and strives to eliminate waste and perform all processes efficiently. By attacking waste and eliminating un-necessary steps that don’t provide value to the customer all effort is focused on what the customer cares and wants in the end product.

Areas to be looked at for elimination of waste are known by the acronym TIMWOOD.

- Transportation (eliminate non needed movement of goods or processes)
- Inventory (keep inventories and items requiring handling to absolute minimum)
- Motion (reduce or eliminate movement of people and processes)
- Waiting (reduce items waiting in queue for next step)
- Overproduction (producing more than is needed building up un-necessary inventory)
- Over Processing (eliminate un-needed steps)
- Defects (build in quality and reduce need for inspections and defect repair)

Applying these concepts to a small online business with limited personnel and resources can potentially increase your output exponentially. For example consider a single person run internet business and all the tasks that must be performed. Functions of President and CEO, Webmaster, Accountant, Copyrighter, Artist, Order Taker, Secretary, File Clerk, information technologist, and numerous other duties are handled. By looking at each function that is performed and looking at what is being done and how much value it is worth will help you prioritize tasks for your online business.

In Lean a process called Value Stream Mapping is performed to map out all the steps needed for a process. In many studies by just eliminating the need for duplicate copies, eliminating un-needed steps can truly increase the throughput.

Something as simple as organizing the office or workspace so everything has its place can reduce the time needed to perform tasks for your online business. For example in the Japanese Auto Industry example each workstation process was minutely examined and steps combined, and eliminated when possible. Normally used tools were placed in specific places with stencils painted on the mounting boards so the workers can visually see where the tool to be returned to the rack went without slowing down to think.

Applying this logic to your online business try these steps:

- Clean Up and Organize!
- Look at what online business records you are keeping and steps taken and eliminate all but needed steps.
- Calculate a monetary value per hour for each function performed. Delegate or outsource lesser value services to someone less expensive or more efficient.
- Automate functions where possible. Use Automated shopping carts, websites, autoresponders, and the like, to reduce the amount of time managing day to day affairs. If your online business is doing well and growing
consider outsourcing functions.
- Eliminate un-needed functions and tasks. Stop surfing the internet or looking aimlessly at web stats. Focus your efforts on what brings value to your customers and money to your online business.
- More? Brainstorming from your perspective will increase this list tailored to your online business model.

By applying these simple tasks to start and expand you will see your online business effectiveness greatly increase.