Looking for Lean in Unlikely Places

I recently came across an intriguing and unexpected reference to lean in an otherwise unrelated article about job hunting.

The article is in the online magazine Suite101, a site with which I was not familiar.

Titled “Tips on Preparing the Perfect Job Application,” the article by Patricia Faulhaber is a checklist of things to do when filling out an application. She makes the point that in a competitive job market, applications should be filled out perfectly.

When preparing for the application form, Faulhaber says, applicants should “develop statements in terms of benefits to the company.”

The example she offers is “My Lean Manufacturing successes would contribute to ABCD Company’s efforts to maintain Lean practices while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in production waste. My past Lean projects have saved my previous company over $200,000”.

I don’t know how (or how much) Faulhaber knows about lean. But I find it interesting that a lean reference would appear in such a non-lean publication. Perhaps lean is becoming more widely known than I thought. (By the way, Suite101 claims to have more than 150,000 articles on its site. I did a quick search of them for lean manufacturing and found only one other article that talked about lean principles.)

Have you come across any lean references or examples in unexpected settings, outside of communities such as manufacturing where the topic is well-known? Share your experiences below.