Blackbootz : you are correct in your initial assessment of Lean. In theory it's exactly like ButterflyEffect describes it. In practice it works nothing like the theory. Lean suffers badly from bad data and bad incentives. It fails to account for people naturally wanting to cheat and cut corners thereby requiring the non value added steps it so boldly try's to eliminate.

I liken lean and six sigma to being a corporate version of communism. It sounds great in theory but in practice it's poorly implemented and does not work well. Dispite that its proponents keep championing it as a magic bullet saying that all failures are a result of improper understanding of lean and all successes being a direct result. As a concequnce lean and six sigma are much like corporate versions of religion where the successful are true believers and the failed are heathans.

If you want to know what lean truly looks like and not the theory that you read in text books and promo videos, stop by the cactus moon bar on a Friday after 3pm and ask some Boeing mechanics. You will get some awesome stories of spectacularly expensive failures.