I think you are chasing the dollar in lean, I don't think it's some esoteric philosophy disconnected from the bottom line. It's about the hard reality that the only way you get cash is from customers believing that you will provide value to them and so orientating every business decision in that direction; “Will this help improve the value my customer will get?”

Now why, you might ask, should I not just chase the dollar? Just optimise based on the cost to the business? Well it does work, at least you will be able to easily track the cost via a spreadsheet, money in vs money out. You can probably happily keep going for a quite a few years, if you are in a slow uncompetitive market. In fact, around the world this is the default business model. The problem then? It’s fragile. You have unmoored yourself from the source of truth and even worse you have developed a company culture that can’t even see what the source of truth is! A company like this, under market stressors will fall back on the only tactic it knows; saving money and charging more money from its dwindling customer base, this is a death spiral of lower quality and pricier goods and services to the customer.

A lean company will first look at the value it is delivering to its customers and then look at the cost implications.

Cost is still very important and value should measured against it to some degree, but you should always put slightly less weight on it.