About Lean Project Manager
Lean Project Manager was created by the consultants and software developers at SysteMental, Inc.

SysteMental, Inc. is a Lean Transformation technical services company providing a range of services for companies making the transition from traditional mass production to Lean Manufacturing/Lean Enterprise. Custom software development is a key service provided by SysteMental, Inc.

LPM Becomes an Idea
The Lean Project Manager idea took root in the 1980’s. One of the current consultants for SysteMental, Inc. was an over-tasked, entry level employee at a Fortune 500 corporation manufacturing site at that time. The company he worked for tasked the entire management team at his plant to implement continuous improvements at an aggressive rate. The site manager and the local team members were all capable, experienced, ambitious, and enthusiastic. It was an ideal place to work.

There was only one problem, the team’s sense of urgency was actually getting in the way of achieving the plant’s objectives. Priorities were changing daily as the latest discovery of an area of sub-par performance was uncovered and shoved to the top of the project list. The team’s sense of urgency was an excellent trait, but something had to be done to keep that sense of urgency from continuously adding projects to an ever-growing “Active” project list. If something was not done, the “Active” list would always be unmanageable, and the completion rate would suffer as each key project owner tried to juggle too many projects at once.

A Clear, Easy To Use Process Was Needed
A well defined process for managing continuous improvement projects was needed. The over-tasked employee took it upon himself to create the process. During the process design phase, the stated goal of the process was, “to accelerate project completion rates while at the same time reducing stress for all team members”. The first version was Microsoft Excel based and somewhat cumbersome. Even so, the local team recognized its value and implemented the process with great success. The plant went on to win numerous awards and to gain tremendous market share from its competitors.

The process contained nothing truly revolutionary. The most obvious key to its success was that great care had been taken to keep the process simple and to implement it in a way that emphasized individual contribution, teamwork and group accountability.

17 Years of Proven Success using LPM
The employee continued to implement the process repeatedly over the next 17 years as he moved throughout his career. The process was well received and had a markedly positive impact wherever it was used. Suggestions were made by the users over the years, and the process was refined.

When SysteMental, Inc. began offering software development in 2001, the idea arose to create web enabled software to make the process easier for potential users to adopt. The software was crafted over the next 3 years with the same care as the original process and retains all of the qualities that made the original process so successful.

The developers used the power of web programming to keep the process very simple. So simple in fact, that we believe it is the simplest, easiest to use, team oriented project management software on the market.

We hope you will agree.