The LAI Lean Academy Experience: Introductory Lean Curriculum

Abstract

This article reports on a decade-long undertaking to develop and widely deploy an introductory Lean curriculum. The origins, objectives, and history of the effort are summarized, as is the content of the core 3-day short course. Versions of the curriculum have been offered to over 1,600 participants in 60 short course and semester-long subjects taught by 45 different instructors in the United States and Latin America. Over 270,000 visits have been made to the curriculum posted on MIT's Open Courseware. Findings on the learning outcomes are presented based upon the extensive database complied from student feedback and self-assessment.

Keywords:

• lean enterprise
• lean healthcare
• lean curriculum
• lean learning
• active learning
• open courseware