You heard everyone’s doing lean these days. So you call in the experts to give you an overview. The part about Toyota beating the competition to a pulp with their lean management gets your attention and you decide that’s what you want for your business. You put some managers in charge, put a few champions through some training and launch the initiative with much fanfare.
Everything goes fine at first. You start to see some results. Then business picks up and priorities change. The place is back to being a mess but no one notices in the company. Customers are breathing down their necks and they are too busy keeping the machines running. Maximise utilisation, increase output. No time for changeovers. Maintenance can wait. Forget root cause analysis. Fix it now, no stopping the machines. We need to build more stock to ensure on time deliveries to customers.
So what happened to lean? Oh, lean is good to have but our priorities are different. We need more stock and longer runs because our products are different. Root cause analysis takes too long. The GEMBA meetings have been on hold for some time and the boards have not been updated but that’s alright. It's just soft stuff. Keeping the workplace organised is good if we have the time but right now we have to keep production running.
The problem with lean is not that it works for only some businesses. In fact it applies not only to manufacturing industry but is increasingly being adopted successfully even in the service industry. Those that do lean correctly stand to benefit tremendously. Look up any successful organisation and chances are they have rolled out and sustained lean or a close derivative. So why do some companies have such a hard time with lean?
1. Lean concepts are counter-intuitive and therefore difficult to grasp. Management thinks they understand it but actually not well enough. Some aspects are prone to be misunderstood. For example, quick change is not done to increase utilisation rate as is often suspected. It’s done mostly to increase flexibility which in turn helps to reduce stock and improve delivery performance. It is very important for management to fully understand lean before attempting to roll it out across the organisation. For this reason, management must receive lean training before others in the organisation so they can then mentor others during the implementation process.
ACTZEL Consulting has some excellent Lean Simulation Games for effective learning of key lean principles. Our games cover manufacturing as well as service environment.
2. Emphasising lean tools & techniques before ‘lean leadership and behaviour’. Lean behaviour includes things like ‘Go See’ (as opposed to relying solely on reports), ‘Challenging the Status Quo’, ‘Setting Targets’, ‘Respect for Workers’, and ‘Continuous Improvement’. Many organisations tend to think of lean as a bunch of tools and techniques only. Yes, tools and techniques are important, but putting them ahead of lean leadership and behaviours is putting the cart before the horse.
3. An organisational structure and culture that encourages individual effort over that of teamwork is another obstacle to implementing lean. Though star achievers are recognised in a lean organisation, there is greater emphasis on teamwork. It pays for organisations to design a reward/recognition system that encourages team effort and rewards team results. Promoting a trusting environment is also an important teamwork fostering trait.
4. Not teaching employees problem solving and quality improvement techniques and not promoting their use in the organisation can also defeat the implementation of lean. Its like seeing problems with a 'lean lense' but not knowing how to tackle them effectively. For this reason, Lean is often combined with Six Sigma, a problem solving methodology, to give us Lean Six Sigma. Those who did TQM in the past may remember the 7 QC tools. These are very useful tools that complement lean. So if you did TQM in the past, don't replace it with lean, add it to lean.
5. Ignoring the development of people performance skills can hinder the implementation of any major change initiative such as lean. Often we get people trained on the technical aspects of lean while overlooking their lack of ability in setting goals, managing priorities, and achieving results. If you want your people to make things happen, then put them through a good people and culture development programme. ACTZEL Consulting has some excellent people development programmes that you may like to check out.
6. Implementing lean in some sort of ‘standard’ sequence without first assessing the business requirements, bottlenecks and pain points. Although some foundation initiatives need to be implemented first for stabilisation purposes, this should be followed through with lean tools that prioritize urgent issues.
7. Not redesigning processes for lean. Conventional processes designed for large batch production can get in the way of introducing key lean concepts of one piece flow and quick changeovers. Unless equipment is redesigned to cater for these key lean concepts, results may be limited. This could lead to abandoning the lean initiative prematurely.
8. Not following change management principles. Promoting awareness, communicating expectations, targets, establishing ownership and responsiblities, training all stakeholders, providing support, following up on progress, and recognising achievements. These are all necessary to drive and sustain lean.
Lean can and should be applied to both manufacturing and non-manufacturing organisations. However, in order to make it stick and achieve Toyota like performance, it is necessary to do it right. From our experience, the above 8 points cover the most important aspects of a proper lean implementation.
Contributed by Gurbachan S Balia, Director at ACTZEL Consulting
Contact: gurbachan@actzelconsulting.com