Process Excellence with Lean Thinking

A Method for Sustainable Business Success.

Lean Thinking is far more than an efficiency program. It is a mindset and leadership philosophy that enables organizations to consistently focus on what truly matters. At its core lies a simple but critical question:
What creates real value for our customers — and what does not?

Especially in economically challenging times, lean, clearly structured, and well-executed processes are a decisive competitive advantage. With Lean Thinking, organizations can systematically identify and permanently eliminate waste. This includes unnecessary waiting times, overproduction, duplicate work, unclear responsibilities, or inefficient communication. The result is higher quality, greater employee satisfaction, and significant cost reductions.

Family-owned businesses in particular benefit from Lean, as they often have long-standing organizational structures and strong employee loyalty. Lean helps them leverage these strengths in a targeted way while streamlining processes, increasing transparency, and consistently aligning activities with value creation.

Process excellence is achieved above all when Lean is combined with a culture of continuous improvement. Employees become active contributors: their ideas and day-to-day operational experience flow directly into process optimization. This increases not only efficiency and effectiveness but also innovation capability across the organization.

Another key lever on the path to process excellence is the intelligent automation and digitalization of processes. Robotic Process Automation (RPA), in particular, offers significant potential. Through the targeted use of RPA — increasingly in combination with artificial intelligence — repetitive tasks can be automated, error rates reduced, and valuable resources freed up. This creates capacity for value-adding activities and strategic development.

The following two practical examples clearly illustrate the potential of Lean Thinking.

90% Fewer Manual Tasks: How RPA Relieves Accounts Payable

In a family-owned, internationally operating mid-sized enterprise, invoice processing in accounts payable was specifically automated. The goal was to make a manual, error-prone process more efficient while noticeably reducing the workload for employees. RPA combined with intelligent document recognition was implemented. The software handled the verification, processing, and allocation of incoming invoices. In addition, so-called “touchless posting” was introduced: invoices under 500 EUR were processed fully automatically.

The result was clear: around 90% of manual activities within the process were eliminated. At the same time, the error rate decreased significantly, and the cost per invoice processed ultimately fell well below that of a nearshore shared service center. As a result, employees were able to focus more on value-adding tasks and actively drive further digitalization within their department.

Lean Reduces Process Cycle Times by 40%

At a manufacturer of entry systems and doors for trains, there was a significant backlog in complaint handling. This led to high costs, dissatisfied customers, and considerable workload pressure on employees. A process analysis revealed that many stakeholders were not familiar with the overall complaint-handling process, and therefore it was not consistently followed or executed.

A cross-functional team of representatives from various departments first mapped and transparently documented the current-state process. Together, they then identified weaknesses and sources of waste. Based on these insights, the team developed a target-state process that defined clear responsibilities and efficiently aligned the individual process steps.

The result: implementing the new process reduced cycle times by approximately 40%, led to noticeable cost savings, and established a shared process understanding along with strong commitment from everyone involved.

Conclusion

The practical examples demonstrate that Lean Thinking and targeted automation and digitalization complement each other effectively. Lean creates transparency, clear responsibilities, and streamlined processes. Building on this foundation, intelligent solutions such as RPA automate repetitive tasks, reduce errors, and free up resources. The result is higher quality, lower costs, reduced workload and higher employee satisfaction, as well as greater capacity for value-adding and strategic activities.

Practical Recommendations

Would you like to explore the approaches described in this article in more depth or implement them in your organization? CA controller akademie offers customized in-house training programs tailored specifically to your company’s needs:

Process Optimization with Lean Thinking