Lean – Let’s Get It Right!

How to Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement

David Rizzardo

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000025347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Développement organisationnel

Lean – Let's Get It Right!: How to Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement (978-0-367-42991-1, 340939)

Shelving Guide: Business & Management / Lean Management

This book addresses the root causes of why a majority of Lean transformations have not met expectations. More importantly, it provides the information needed to turn around the failure mechanisms and transform them into critical success factors.

Lean – Let's Get It Right! delves into the psychology of change and motivation and clarifies the roles and responsibility changes which are required for alignment with Lean principles. While the author includes a review of Lean principles, the majority of the book either provides more depth of understanding of the principles or highlights how misalignment can thwart Lean transformation efforts. What this provides is not only clarity, but it establishes a solid reference point or framework to guide the Lean strategy. The reader will begin to see how the principles are not simply a random set of characteristics or features of Lean, but are actually a set of fundamental beliefs on which all else is based.

Though repeated throughout the book that an organization must develop the specifics of their own Lean roadmap, this book concludes with guidance on making it happen. This book, with its primary focus on people, leadership, and principles, and less so on the details of tools and techniques, can be thought of as providing the few critical missing puzzle pieces to enable an effective Lean transformation.

Chapter 1

What is Lean?

Let’s begin our journey by defining the challenge before us. The challenge can be described as a gap, from where we are now to where we want to be. Closing this gap is the problem that we are trying to solve, and understanding where we want to be is essential. All problem-solving processes start with defining and clarifying the problem, whether the process being followed is PDCA or PDSA (Plan-Do-Check/Study-Act), DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control), or any other model grounded in the scientific method. So to address this initial problem-solving step, let’s begin by answering the basic question, “What is Lean?” Without an adequate answer to this question, we may be working with a vague concept that we desire to achieve, but is not defined sufficiently to enable us to develop an effective plan for moving forward. Due to lack of clarity, we won’t even be sure that we’re launching our journey in the right direction. This obviously would not be a good starting point. Or, just as ineffective, we might begin our journey with different ideas as to our objective. Let’s have a uniform understanding of where we want to go.

It seems like a simple question – “What is Lean?” – but there really isn’t a short, Webster-like, definition of Lean that effectively captures the magnitude of what it really means to be Lean or to have a Lean culture. Our objective at this point is to create a clear enough vision and direction for us to move towards as we delve deeper throughout this book. Research on the internet will produce at least a dozen different variants of the definition of Lean – some of which will point you in the right direction, others which might sidetrack you for a while. Most of the inadequate definitions aren’t necessarily wrong or totally misaligned with Lean, but rather they are insufficient, incomplete. They don’t tell enough of the story to be effective.

Eliminating Waste

One of the most popular definitions of Lean is eliminating waste. As for a short, compact, powerful definition, this is pretty good. I’ve used it often myself. We’ll definitely revisit this topic of waste in subsequent chapters. Eliminating waste is one of the principles we’ll review which form the framework that our Lean culture is built upon. Adding a few more words to this short definition gives us more insight as to the target of our waste-busting activities, eliminating waste from company processes. However, it’s difficult to gain a vision of our objective even with this expanded definition, and at the start of our journey, we need more clarity.

Lean Tools

Another common definition of Lean is that it is a set of analysis and improvement tools. We definitely need tools to identify and eliminate waste, but a tool-based definition of Lean is not only incomplete, but it can actually lead us down an ill-advised path. Too many companies have passionately used as many of the tools in the Lean toolbox as they could find, but then have been disappointed when progress has been made only in a few isolated areas, or has plateaued or regressed over time.

Let’s think about the tools approach for a moment and compare it with an example from outside the factory: the building of a house. Does the house builder start the day by saying, “Let’s see how many of my tools I can use today!” or “Today is hammer day! Let’s use the hammer everywhere! Let’s do it team; it’s hammer time!” Of course, this is absolutely ridiculous. The objective is not to use the hammer, a tool, but rather it is to build the house by utilizing the appropriate tools.

However, isn’t this absurd scenario exactly what many organizations have done with Lean, by laser focusing on the use of the tools, when Lean success has been defined by how many Lean tools were utilized? Assessments based primarily on tool usage have been used to measure Lean status and progress. “We’ve employed more Lean tools this year, so we’re doing better!” Well actually, that may be true, but maybe not. Back to the house analogy, it depends on how you’ve used that hammer and circular saw. Posting value stream maps, implementing 5S, and putting up communication boards everywhere, all gain us points. These are, in fact, a few of the tools or techniques which you will notice in most robust Lean cultures. But, in some organizations, for some reason, after a few months, maybe it will take a year or two, Lean seems to be something we used to do back when, not now, and we are left wondering what could have possibly happened to our Lean “program.” (It’s okay to nod your head in agreement. Believe me; you’re not alone in traveling down the Lean tools path.)

Sure, we need the right tools to identify problems and eliminate waste. We don’t want to try to build our house with a sharp stick and a rock as our tools. Lean tools are powerful, are critical components of our Lean strategy, and deserve mention in our definition of Lean. But as a standalone description, they’re insufficient and can actually drive us down an ineffective pathway. Our Lean vision is still too cloudy for moving forward with only the understanding that we want to eliminate waste from company processes, and we need effective analysis and improvement tools to accomplish this.

Culture Change

There’s one word which has already been used in previous text, and will be one of the most repeated words throughout this book, which we must include in our Lean definition … culture. We are striving to develop a Lean culture. The word culture implies that we want to embed something into our organization’s DNA. Lean is not a specific improvement project, initiative, or program, but an integral part of what we do around here. This phrase, “the way we do things around here,” can serve as a definition of what we mean when using the word culture. Lean must become woven into the very fabric of our organizations, part of our culture. We go beyond just doing Lean to being Lean.

Continuous Improvement

So at this point in building our baseline Lean definition, we know we want to create a culture, and we know something about the activities which will occur within this culture – waste reduction efforts which utilize the appropriate Lean tools. However, there is a key descriptor of the desired culture which is still missing … continuous improvement. We are trying to embed a culture of continuous improvement. These two words, continuous improvement, change everything. Much of the remainder of this book is devoted to what must change to develop this culture and for it to take hold within an organization. The adage, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” is no longer an acceptable mantra. Rather, “If it’s not broke, let’s take it apart and put it back together even better,” is a more appropriate Lean mindset.

Institutional Obsession with Improvement

To expand our understanding of the desired Lean culture, consider the following statement in reference to Toyota’s competitiveness from an article titled, No Satisfaction at Toyota:¹ “It is rooted in an institutional obsession with improvement that Toyota manages to instill in each one of its workers, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was accomplished yesterday.”

I believe the four-word phrase “institutional obsession with improvement” does a great job of capturing the essence of a Lean culture. An obsession with improvement is quite different than the culture of status quo which exists in many organizations. Remember, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” If you’re holding on to this obsolete mindset, watch your competition pass you by due to their obsession with experimenting and moving forward by engaging everyone, every single day.

Adding Customer Value

Value and customer are implicit in the definition of waste, but I believe that no definition of Lean would be adequate without their inclusion. Having them hidden behind some of the other words just isn’t enough exposure. Another word which should be added to our definition is strategy to emphasize the fact that developing a Lean culture requires a plan of action specific to your organization. It’s not going to happen by simply wishing it to be; we need an effective plan and strategy of continuous improvement to embed Lean into “the way we do things around here.” One note of warning is to make sure that the Lean strategy and the overall business strategy are integrated together.

Let’s try to put our Lean definition pieces together to see if we’ve created a working definition that is satisfactory in describing our Lean objective. Our Lean baseline definition would look something like this:

Lean is a strategy designed to embed a culture of continuous improvement where everyone strives to eliminate waste in company processes by utilizing the appropriate tools to add ever-increasing value for the customer.

Of course, even our proposed definition is incomplete, and we can continue to add key words and phrases such as philosophy, mindset, or experimentation in an attempt to complete it further and expand an already long-winded statement; however, I do believe that it provides an adequate vision and direction for us to move forward. The remainder of this book, especially Chapter 3 – which focuses on the Lean principles – can be considered a continuation of the clarification and expansion of the answer to the basic question which we began with: “What is Lean?”

Transformation

We’ve focused on establishing a baseline definition of Lean. Admittedly, we’ve defined a daunting objective. It’s hard to imagine that any sort of cultural transformation will be easy to accomplish. No one promised that our journey was going to be an easy one. It will be challenging, fulfilling, and transformational for your company and employees, but easy … unfortunately not.

In the next chapter we’ll take a look at some of the areas where we have stumbled in the past so as to learn from our past mistakes and blind spots that have knocked us off our Lean course of excellence. If we address these, our likelihood of success increases exponentially; we can flip or transform these failure mechanisms into success factors. If we fail to address them, our Lean progress will likely be described as “spotty” at best, where isolated islands of excellence may exist, but Lean never becomes part of our company’s DNA where everyone is engaged in improving processes … everywhere, every single day.

Action Item – Lean Definition Review

At your next Lean steering committee meeting reflect upon your Lean efforts to date and discuss if a faulty definition of Lean may have led you towards an objective that is misaligned with the baseline definition proposed in this chapter. Or, possibly your team members have not had a uniform understanding of the objective or direction. Maybe some had envisioned Lean to be a program or initiative for the next so many years which they somehow have to “fit in” around their regular jobs rather than a cultural transformation which never ends, and which redefines their regular jobs. Chapter 5 is devoted to this redefinition of roles and responsibilities. If your team is striving towards different objectives due to bypassing the critical first step of the problem-solving process, long-term success is impossible.

Note: If you are not familiar with a “Lean steering committee” and its purpose and responsibilities, refer to Chapter 5.

Note

1. Fishman, Charles. “No Satisfaction at Toyota.” Fast Company. December 2006/January 2007. Accessed January 3, 2019. www.fastcompany.com/58345/no-satisfaction-toyota.

Chapter 2

Learning from the Past

Where We Have NOT Gone Wrong

Why are we still at the point where the development of a Lean culture is the exception ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Action Items
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1 What is Lean?
• 2 Learning from the Past
• 3 The Lean Culture Foundation: The Lean Principles
• 4 Key Support Systems, Tools, and Practices
• 5 Key Roles and Responsibilities
• 6 Resistance, Demotivation, and Motivation
• 7 Making it Happen
• 8 Final Thoughts
• Appendix: Quick and Dirty Lean Culture Assessment
• Index