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Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of Lean; however, the Lean concept in higher education institutions (HEIs) is still not very popular, and these institutions face challenges in implementing Lean activities. The purpose of this study is to identify worldwide experiences of Lean implementation in HEIs and to share best practices of Lean implementation.

The research was conducted by surveying 34 Lean practitioners from HEIs.

This study outlined the importance of the complexity of the community and its processes as the main barrier for Lean implementation in the HEI. The study highlighted that Lean determined positive change in the institutions and that strong leadership, commitment of top management as well as good communication and teamwork were the keys to successful implementation of Lean.

This study provides valuable insights and aspects of implementation and maintenance of Lean initiatives in HEIs around the world; however, a detailed analysis would require a larger number of respondents.

This study proposes that practitioners implementing Lean in HEIs should identify barriers, plan their activities and take into account success factors. According to the results of this study, managers of HEIs should deal with the main barrier – the complexity of the community and its processes. In addition, they should carry out employees’ and Lean facilitators’ training on Lean and ensure that the main success factors such as strong leadership practices, senior management’s commitment, good communication and teamwork are present.

This study adds to the existing knowledge on global experiences of applying Lean in HEIs.

Achievement of objectives of education and training is one of significant factors influencing quality of life. Higher education institutions use different work, teaching methods and tools; however they are inadequate in many cases. Today higher education institutions have problems concerning sustention and rise of certain level of education by giving the job for graduates, using of new technologies that help to present, manage, evaluate and control knowledge. The main objectives of quality management system (QMS) at higher education institutions are as follow: to assure continuous improvement of education quality; to demonstrate performance results and relevant facts to the interested parties (customers of college or university, social partners, administrative institutions) showing the abilities of education institution to prepare high qualification specialists that fully correspond to changing requirements of labour market. The QMS at education institutions should be designed as continuous process, considering that the quality of final product is the result achieved in primary processes. The process shall involve all interested parties. Parameters and indicators of education quality can help to analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of existing QMS. The results of quality audits should be also taken into account when designing and implementing QMS at organization. Literature review showed that for the assurance of education quality three different approaches prevail: total quality management (TQM); requirements of quality awards and assessment models; and QMS corresponding to the requirements of ISO 9001 standard. The case study of QMS design and implementation at Vilnius Law and Business College is presented in the paper. The peculiarities, difficulties and obstacles of QMS implementation in the higher educations institutions are analysed in more detail in this article.