Roslyn Heights, NY, September 23, 2005 Vuepoint, a solutions provider that helps clients create, deliver and manage their learning, today announced that it has been awarded the first-ever "Lean Kaizen Spirit" award from Toyota. The award recognizes Vuepoint's pioneering work in bringing the lean philosophy, which Toyota founded in the manufacturing space, into the knowledge worker environment.

Vuepoint, which has provided Toyota with a comprehensive learning and content management solution, began discussing its own internal development processes last year and how using lean principles can help gain a competitive edge in the e-learning market. They initiated their lean transformation by gathering off-site to identify “muda,” or wasteful practices, and then took their insights back to the office and incorporated lean practices throughout the company, from software development to sales to management.

“We applaud the courage that Vuepoint displayed in making this transformation,” said Ken Pilone, Senior Education Manager at the University of Toyota. “The executive team at Vuepoint was required to question every practice in their office. Ultimately they were able to balance each action’s resource commitment against its total value to speed up the development process.”

As an outcome of its lean training, Vuepoint transformed its Client Forum from a product evaluation event into a key step in the software development process. The defining test of their lean progress came with the development of the Vuepoint Learning System (VLS) 5.0. By integrating client feedback into the design cycle, rather than after the release of the VLS via software patches, Vuepoint delivered twice the functionality in half the time — a four-fold increase in productivity and client value.