Get your product LCS Approved
Do you have a product, service or technology that enhances lean processes or behaviours and meets our LCS Approved criteria? If so, you could be eligible for our LCS Approved credential.
Showcase our stamp of approval on your website, product literature, in your email signatures, on your letterheads or on your social channels, to tell customers that your product is approved by the LCS.
Build customer confidence & product reassurance
Give customers confidence that your product will help propel them on their continuous improvement journeys. The LCS Approved credential reassures the buyer that your product is worthy of investment and adds genuine value.
Get the edge over your competition
LCS Approved brings a dynamic new selling point to your product, giving it the upper hand. If a customer is weighing up two similar products and one has the LCS credential, which do you think they’re going to purchase?
Prove your product aligns to CI thinking
Let customers know that your product has been tried, tested and endorsed by its users and that it is considered a valuable addition when it comes to improving continuous improvement effectiveness.
LCS Approved credential criteria
To receive the LCS Approved credential, your product must demonstrate it is supportive to lean thinking practices and behaviours and aligns well with the LCS Lean Enterprise Characteristics. Importantly, the product's lean benefits must be verified by its customers or users.
Lean Enterprise Characteristics
A – Lean Enterprise Perspective & CI Culture
- Supports long-term objectives of the organisation and promotes constancy of purpose.
- Fosters the development of an extended enterprise beyond the operating unit in which it is implemented.
- Encourages the organisation to manage by data.
- Supports a value stream perspective, process/systems and scientific thinking.
- Supports organisational alignment – clarity of purpose and connected goals.
- Supports the pursuit of perfection, a focus on long term solutions and simplification.
B – Lean Leadership, Positive Engagement, Respect for People
- Facilitates senior management engagement in operations and Gemba activity.
- Supports the development of staff capability competency in problem solving.
- Supports a leadership style characterised by humility and respect for every individual.
- Encourages the development of a learning organisation, a questioning culture, and the promotion of new ideas.
- Supports empowerment, trust and effective communications.
C – Quality, Process Flow & Pull
- Delivers improvements in productivity.
- Supports the presentation of visual controls and problem visibility.
- Facilitates demand responsiveness and pull systems.
- Supports the levelling of workload, reducing unevenness.
- Supports quality at source and the delivery of “right first time” in both material quality and service quality.
- Delivers waste identification and removal.
- Supports the appropriate standardisation of processes.
D – Value, Customer, Stakeholder Understanding
- Helps the operation respond effectively to customer demand.
- Promotes customer focus and the creation of customer or stakeholder value.
A customer backed credential
We want to ensure that the products we endorse are authentically valuable to the lean community. That is why we get customer feedback on product performance and validation of the quality, cost, delivery claims of the product owner. The LCS assessors also check the product’s alignment to the LCS Lean Enterprise Characteristics.
Why is this beneficial?
In short, it’s because this adds so much more weight to your product’s value proposition. Not only has the LCS considered it valuable enough to become LCS Approved, but customers have too. So, what’s to stop new customers believing in it when it comes to making that buying decision?
What is the cost of becoming LCS Approved?
The LCS Approved licence lasts for two years, after which it can be renewed for a further two years.
First time LCS Approved fee
£1,450.00
+VAT
The fee is for a two year licence and is payable after the Sign Off meeting.
Renewal LCS Approved fee
£950.00
+VAT
The renewal process includes a review of the product’s performance over the licence period and an update on customer experience and feedback.
The guide to becoming LCS Approved
A short guide to LCS Approved covering its aims, benefits, application process, assessment criteria and costs.
How do I apply for LCS Approved?
The application process
Complete an online Application Form, which collects detailed information about the product, including its features and the lean benefits it offers its users. The LCS reviews the application and provides feedback. If the application is accepted, work on customer corroboration starts and when that stage is satisfactorily completed, the process ends with a Sign Off meeting, signalling formal approval.
Application
The Application Form requires you to:
- Provide detailed information on the product – e.g. technical specification, features, market positioning.
- Describe the product’s key benefits and the value it delivers.
- Explain how the product supports lean practices and implementation.
- Provide information on existing customer feedback mechanisms, or for new products, how customer corroboration will be evidenced.
Customer/user corroboration
Customer endorsement of the lean benefits of the product is central to gaining LCS Approved status and the method to evidence this includes:
- Evaluating existing customer data on the product’s performance.
- Obtaining feedback from a sample of product customers/users
- Testing with customers/users the product owner’s claims about its lean benefits and its impact lean implementation.
- Evaluate the product’s performance based on the experience of those using it.
- Piloting activity, including product use evaluation and gathering suggestions for improvement.
Apply to become LCS Approved
Complete an application form for your product to gain the LCS Approved Credential
