Lean applies to every employee role in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization. Lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers. Lean Principles is the foundation course for all other Continuous Improvement topics.