The Purpose of becoming Lean

For Organisations

On my initial meeting with an organisations Leader the first thing I need to know is “Why Lean and what are your aims and goals of this engagement?”, this question, and asking it right at the outset of the engagement achieves 2 things for me. Firstly it gets the executive thinking in an open minded way and presents me with a window to challenge that thinking, and secondly, it allows me to assess the Leaders mindset and consequently the organisations culture.

Unfortunately most organisational leaders immediately begin to speak of cost reduction. Some may even state that they are attempting to “become the best” in their field of expertise, this without any real substance, vision or strategy of just how to achieve this end.

It is only truly enlightened leaders that have a vision beyond short term cost reduction and these leaders speak of growth, expansion and improving the working lives of their people. I see it as my challenge to help the less enlightened see how these things are the drivers for a truly successful transformational change effort.

To understand this, one must first understand the purpose of Lean and, in my opinion; the best place to get this information is direct from the horses’ mouth.

Taiichi Ohno is considered, by many, to be the father of Lean. He was a Japanese businessman whose work was fundamental in building Toyota’s production system which was later adopted in the US and named Lean.

On describing the Toyota production system and therefore Lean Ohno says:

“All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.”

This statement has no mention of cost reduction, only time reduction and, in practice, when you analyse the improvements that are made by the application of Lean tools they are all measured in time, not currency.

Of course we all know that time is money but Ohno’s statement is just one example of the many subtleties that are fundamental to Lean success and sustainability. It is all down to the way in which we look at and interpret our situation. It requires the correct mindset. There is a huge difference between having faith that cost savings will come if we focus on removing the wasteful things in our work, and focussing wholly but with blinkers, on cost reduction. A good organisation will focus constantly on safety, quality, on time delivery and its people as well as cost in equal measure. Favouring one over the others can result in catastrophic failure. For example what do you suppose might happen if an organisation focussed on DIFOT (delivery in full on time) over all other measures (SQCM)? As it becomes apparent that this measure is in danger of being missed panic ensues, more people are thrown into the mix, corners can become cut and work arounds become the norm. Consequently safety is at risk as there are more people in the same area, and with probably lower skill sets and familiarity, quality is at risk, “just make sure the order gets completed on time, no matter what!”. Also more people equate to more cost right? What do you think happens to morale in this situation?

An organisation that has been on their Lean journey for a little while will soon begin to realise that they are now able to achieve much more with much less. They will also realise that they now have a decision to make, how do they manage all of this extra time?

1.     Put extra effort into filling the newly created capacity with more product or new revenue streams.

2.     Reduce costs by removing people from the organisation and continue to produce the same volumes.

Be aware that any organisation that chooses option 2 also chooses to immediately end their Lean journey. Lean requires the people from within the organisation to be fully on board and engaged with the effort. There is nothing more guaranteed to kill an organisations morale than redundancy.

A truly Lean organisation is constantly shifting focus between sales and R&D, in order to fill capacity, and operations, to create the capacity for new revenue streams and increased sales.

For Managers

“I just don’t have the time” or “I’m too busy”, are common statements I hear from managers all the time. Managers are generally time poor and have their heads in the fire of daily operations to such a level that they become blinded to what is around them. They work on building-in short cuts and work-arounds just to get the job done and all too often they are commended for this behaviour. Unfortunately these things all incur associated costs and build in waste, and invariably the problems will just return time and again. In the long term and, inadvertently, they damage the organisation which they are so passionately trying to protect.

What Lean does for managers again, is give them back time. It aims to engage the manager’s people in solving their own problems (with guidance, of course) and have them removed once and for all, never to return. However Lean also aims to ensure that they never run out of problems on which to work, this we call continuous improvement.

For the workforce    

Making people’s life easier or better in some way is what drives me, and it is this that makes my work worth the effort I put into it. It is for this reason that I have worked with Lean for almost 20 years.

Visualising the workplace and standardising it through the application of Lean tools, presents everybody with the opportunity to optimise their work, their workplace and their working situation.

In my experience, when people go to work, they just want to do the best job they are capable of, with as little disruption or interference as possible. Anything that constitutes or creates these things is seen as an annoyance and only serves to create frustration and lower morale.

In Ohno’s statement he speaks of “reducing the non-value adding wastes” these things are generally the same things that people do not like having in their work, those things that create low morale, so anything that supports the removal of those things can surely only be a good thing.

The morale of the workforce soon begins to lift as they realise that they are spending more time on adding value and much less on those things that get in the way of them doing so.

Troy has almost 20 years of Lean experience both as a practitioner and Lean consultant across many industries including automotive, manufacturing, mining, oil and gas and bio technology.

Troy can be contacted by calling on 0477 428231.