Lean

Lean and Information Technology Toolkit

Environmental agencies across the United States are finding better, faster, and more efficient ways to address environmental management challenges. Lean and information technology (IT) are two important ways that environmental agencies are transforming how they protect human health and the environment. Lean is an improvement approach and set of methods that eliminate non-value added activity or “waste.” New IT approaches can help agencies to streamline, modernize, and expand the services they provide to customers.

This Lean and IT Toolkit explores how Lean and IT can be used to accomplish the following:

  • Efficiently design new products and services to better meet customer needs (Lean Startup)
  • Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of existing processes (Lean process improvement)
  • Reduce the costs and risks of developing new IT products (Agile development)

This Toolkit provides how-to guidance, resources, and tips for making improvements in each of these applications of Lean and IT (product conceptualization, process improvement, and IT product development), as well as describes how agencies can collaborate effectively on improvement projects.

You will need Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA’s About PDF page to learn more.