Use of lean production instruments in designing the educational process

Introduction: the concept of lean production seeks not a reduction of costs but complete elimination of losses that do not bring added value to the product or service. In any system, in all processes - from production and assembly, to hospitality, education, health, transport and social services - there are hidden losses. Teaching itself is a kind of production process in which a certain "product" (student) acquires the added value (knowledge and skills), that is why it has become topical in educational institution to establish the working group on introduction of lean production into the learning process. The article presents the factors that are to be taken into account while designing the educational process based on the lean production principles. Materials and Methods: methods of analysis of existing system of vocational training in higher school, monitoring of the results of educational practice, modeling and experimental work in the process of analytical work were used. Results: important direction for eliminating losses in the educational process is the development of the interlinked curricula, allowing to avoid repeated study of a number of didactic units in the organisation of continuous training in the system "Vocational education - Higher education". In order to eliminate the possibility of incompetent graduate one should focus on the organisation of objective final control. Losses in education are caused by to the mismatch between labour market demand and the spectrum of areas of training in educational institutions. Discussion and Conclusions: the lean production possibilities are defined as instrumental in ensuring the organisation of "the process of lean learning": by applying some lean production instruments such as the designing of the educational process, preventing of "faulty work" while training students, the attuning of the training system to employers' requests, the visualisation of the education process, standardisation of the academic process. Some possible losses that may happen in the organisation of the education process are identified; the ways to avoid these losses are discussed.