The LEAN and winding road...

What is LEAN Production?

Lean is "a way of doing things".
The story begins from Toyota and is related to a challenge that the company had to face when it had to improve its own production system after the deep crisis that followed World War II.
The key point of LEAN Production System (LPS) is to provide excellent quality to the customers (quality that it perceives) avoiding to hide defects and inefficiencies that often lie in stocks and in processes that do not add value to the products.
"Just in time" and "One piece flow" are the words that most often appear in assessing the LPS.
However the LPS implementation requires energies that are beyond the skills that can be learned during a master course.
These energies are delivered not to particular difficult processes to implement, but rather in changing the ways that people are used to follow, often layered in years of practices and believed to be impossible to optimize.
I had the opportunity to see a LPS implementation trial and I saw some weaknesses that should be considered to avoid LPS failure: failure that could lead to serious damages to the companies.
Here some rough personal considerations:
1. LEAN must be committed by the very top management: though LEAN needs to be implemented from below, it cannot succeed if not planned and addressed with high determination from the CEO and BOD.
2. LEAN is a cultural attitude, a "lifestyle": LEAN can be taught but not everybody has the right attitude to implement it. It is something that should be already in the DNA of a LEAN Manager. There are people that aren't able to implement the LEAN approach because it is too different from their lifestyle!
3. LEAN is environmentally friendly: the LEAN approach tries to minimize the central energy and reduces wastes
4. LEAN is a "get the right things and reward" way: this is hard to implement as it is related to people relationships. LEAN can't work without a strong Human Resources management. Teams, which are the corner bricks of the LEAN philosophy, can't be created by magic formulas. Motivation, targets and rewards are key points.
5. LEAN implementation needs to be smooth (but not too much): "kaizen" is a word often used in LEAN which means "small continuous changes toward the targets" but a difficult balance must be found between short range results, useful for positive reinforcing feedback and too strong changes, that generate resistances. You have to move in a "viscous" medium.
6. LEAN must be driven from below: LEAN pull-system reduces the centralized control energy, but quite a large amount of energy needs to be distributed through all the production system in terms of LEAN knowledge and determination to get long term results.
7. LEAN needs you "to have your hands in the dirt": it is hard to serve your team if you don't have the right knowledge and your colleagues don't believe in your capabilities.
8. LEAN drives you to find a comfortable "no comfortable zone": every time you relax somewhere you are not doing a good job. Even if it may seems crazy, you should be happy to always be in search of "cheese".

Looking for "cheese"? ;)