Lean Connections

Jim Womack’s newsletter this month, posted here, very clearly explores one of the underlying reasons that Lean or Operational Excellence initiatives are often difficult to sustain (and sometimes even get off the ground).  Every affected stakeholder -whether the executive leadership team recognize it or not – looks carefully at that proposed improvement effort and asks “what’s in it for me?” and “what happens to me if this moves forward?”  So I ask, what does that individual do if he or she is getting an answer with which they’re not entirely happy?

In his article Jim refers to Pareto’s (Mr. 80/20 rule) second concept of economic optimality, and immediatly reminds me of this phrase in the Hippocratic Corpus: “first do no harm.” Some lean practitioners attempting to drive change unfortunately ignore this admonition at their own peril.

If, in our zeal to improve something, we cannot envision how our ideal future state may negatively impact another part of the organization’s currently “adequate” state, then we are indeed not optimizing the whole. Rather, we fall back on the silo-thinking which created the need for making changes/improvements in the first place.  And that’s where true “Lean Leadership” in the executive ranks shows what it’s made of.  Go forth, ye, and make sustainable Lean happen! 

And that’s the way I see it.  Adam Zak

Continuously improving means just that. Nowhere is it written that when things aren’t so rosy it’s time to take a break from CI. If your corporate culture has any meaning at all, focusing on Operational Excellence is all the more critical now. These are the cornerstones you need to be reinforcing for the future.

Do you have the Lean Leadership team necessary for your company to survive, and even thrive, during the current economic downturn?  Do your Lean Leaders have the expertise and experience to build a stronger foundation for growth and profitability during the coming rebound?  

As a recent message from Jim Womack’s Lean Enterprise Institute emphasizes, great Lean Leaps are made during tough economic times. Taiichi Ohno pushed the Toyota Production System through the entire Toyota Motor Company in 1950 during the great crisis that had left Toyota teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Short term, the right Lean Leaders will create immediate benefits:  freeing cash through elimination of excess inventory, protecting profit margins by improving quality and productivity, strengthening ties with customers by improving service, and converting orders-to-cash faster by reducing lead times. But just as importantly, strategic Lean Leaders will also help your company build for the future and create long-term competitive advantage. With the right Lean team in place your company can advance its Lean transformation using a systemic approach across the enterprise:

• By developing employees as problem solvers;
• By changing the management culture from command and control to fact-based and flexible;
• By extending the Lean transformation beyond the manufacturing shop floor to finance, engineering, marketing, and other critical support areas;
• By implementing Lean principles across the supply chain at your key suppliers and at their key suppliers;
• By transitioning from a tools-based implementation path to a course that applies Lean Management as a complete business system;
• By changing the very culture of how the organization thinks and conducts business on a daily basis.

You know it makes sense.  Do it!

A guest posting by Andrew Dillon

Extraordinary times call on us to look again to the core of the Toyota revolution and how we can make it our own

Strange things happen in a crisis. Consider, for example, that some companies, in retrenchment mode, are cutting back on investments that not too long ago they were eager to make in learning and implementing the principles of the Toyota Production System. At least part of the market for improvement seems to be shrinking, in other words, at precisely the moment when just about everything in the marketplace seems to need improvement.

This is more than just strange. After all, Toyota’s management system was forged as a response to severe economic hardship, its basic mindset tempered by the threat of catastrophe. Circumstances have changed over the years, of course, but the Toyota system has proven to offer a potent and strikingly reliable way to survive-and even thrive-against fierce competition, in hard times as well as good. Its signal strengths – relentless cost cutting, commitment to people and dedication to long-term vision – are made for crisis.

Clearly the message is not lost on some businesses, where leaders are intensifying their focus on learning lean. But other companies remain a puzzlement. Why, when they stand to profit from it most, are some retreating from efforts to reap the benefits of the Toyota revolution?  read more »