What it Takes to Transform Lean?

Five-decades old philosophy – lean management, is now extended beyond the shop floors. It is gaining traction in other functions and sectors too, instead just confining to manufacturing houses. During last three decades, many green field manufacturers have successfully demonstrated the value of converting lean. But the question - how to transform lean successfully, yet remains a complex puzzle. 

Successfully converting an enterprise or a function into lean is exceptionally challenging and a special area by itself. While returns dominate the risks involved, setting a reliable stage for launching, creating the essential organization climate and changing peoples’ mindset and culture, are herculean tasks. What is dicey thing to most lean practitioners is, what is aimed at, where to start and how to go about. Setting the right direction is possible only via sheer vision and foresight. And this demands mastery in lean thinking and as well as the art of teaching lean principles across the organization. Of course, instituting a learning culture cannot be ignored in such an effort. Gaining momentum across both, board and shop floor is possible through a holistic marketing effort.  Infact it is more than a selling job, to the leadership at all levels. Managing sustenance of lean thinking and as well making efforts in that direction is, of sure, more than just challenging. Some times they fall in quite tricky situations not knowing what to answer when people ask about results of lean efforts. Even at a later stage, after investing so much time and efforts the leaders do have hardly anything to show. And therefore, holding people and continuing them to think lean is a continuous challenge. It is also hard to insure employees’ commitment even after buying-in them at the time when lean efforts were actually launched. 

Enterprise Change & Transformational Leadership

Transforming into lean is a continuous journey and just cannot be realized overnight. Moving towards lean enterprise calls for a radical change that - people in the boardroom to blue-collar machinists in the shop floor doesn’t wish to undergo. It involves fundamental changes in the organization’s social system before any process can be improved. In one way, lean transformation is a strategic movement and involves massive organization-wide change. To take it forward smoothly and seamlessly, an extra-ordinary leadership with proven expertise, vision and persistence is critical and forms as one of the pillars of successful lean implementation. Very few leaders have the mastery in driving towards lean successfully. For instance, Eiji Toyoda, as a CEO mastered the art of lean transformation. Toyoda was committed and consistently emphasized on lean principles to transform Toyota into lean enterprise. Though lean principles look simpler to understand, they are quite tricky for the managers to integrate into their daily managerial practice. What should be achieved is often a puzzle before the leadership that comes only through at least decade-long lean learning efforts. A true lean transformation should start with learning the lean tools while applying the principles under the guidance of masters. But this can be done only when we believe in the lean principles.

HR and Culture

 

While all the enterprise sub-systems are equally important, the role of Human Resource (HR) is indispensable. Workforce participation and their involvement help sustain the momentum and accelerate lean transformation efforts. HR departments should, therefore, play a crucial role in realizing the full potential of HR. They should address the challenge of better engaging their full human potential for successful lean transformation. To ensure a smooth sail, a congenial organizational climate is required. A concrete culture of commitment, teamwork, persistence, learning, communication and measurement should be promoted among the organizational members. Above all, a strong and sustained belief in lean principles should be induced in every organization’s corner. If people don’t see immediate results they simply lose faith in it and may give up. Whether CEO or a machine operator, irrespective of their role everyone who is part of the organization should devote an eye to look for lean opportunities. Along with ‘top-down’ initiatives, ‘bottom-up’ lean ideas should be promoted because that’s where the knowledge for lean opportunities exists.  After all it is the bottom-line people, who are first exposed to process hurdles, time delays, idle resources, redundant tasks and unwanted steps. 

Sustained Focus

Many organizations start off lean initiatives ambitiously but fail to sustain their focus to complete lean transformation. There are hardly companies that have claimed as lean organizations years after they kick off lean efforts. As lean journey is a never-ending story, the management should change its own mindset first. Organizations aiming to become lean should treat lean as a persistent effort to eliminate waste and an ongoing improvement effort. At the same time, it should ensure buy-in from all the employees. Regular attempts should be made by the leadership at all levels to continue or restart the journey. A culture of review and reinforcement of lean activities on a weekly basis at least if not on a daily-basis, should be instituted.

Tools and Practices

Taking care of the human-side is just not enough. Lean success comes only when demonstrated practices are also implemented employing the enabling tools. Practices such as Just-in-time (JIT), business process reengineering (BPR), total quality control (TQC), total productivity management (TPM), continuous process improvement (CPI) and value stream mapping (VSM) are applied on a continuous basis to shape organizations into lean.  Six sigma, kanban, Toyota production system (TPS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), etc. are some well accepted tools and/or solutions that enable lean implementation.

There is no hard and fast rule saying that lean initiatives should be started in a big way.  It need not necessarily be carried simultaneously across all functions in the organization. Indeed, lean practices and the enabling solutions can be applied based on the objective assessment of available lean opportunities and firm’s goals. Lean transformation efforts can start small in the shop floor or in any function, and slowly evolve into an enterprise-wide movement. But, the real support should come from the boardroom. When lean becomes an organization-wide philosophy, a culture of knowledge sharing in between departments help avoid reinventing cycles.

Solid, Sponsored & Synchronized Intiative

Evolving into a Lean Enterprise will take a firm, almost 18 - 24 months on an average (“Building a lean enterprise” by AME Info, November 20 - 2004). Though a path-breaking strategy to achieve growth, the Lean Enterprise journey is not a simple or easy task.  For many firms, it requires more than just changing their functional practices and associated work cultures.  A solid road-map is critical to transform into a lean enterprise. Most importantly, lean should be the business priority. Top management support and sponsorship is critical, as the line managers usually resist unless there is pressure from the top. As part of developing the business case, the departments should articulate the need for improvement.  Change towards an operational culture should be encouraged, wherein the employees feel empowered to make suggestions without fear.  Ongoing reviews such as Kaizen events can help address such challenges. A lean organization should be built around a flexible, demand-sensitive model, where production is driven by customer orders and not based on forecasts. Therefore, to realize lean organization, all activities internally across departments should be coordinated and synchronized. The lean journey should also entail extending operational flexibility and visibility to the supply and channel partners

                                      

Fix the New Millennium Challenge

Many green field companies have demonstrated lean success in last few decades. But the situation today is different. Short leadership tenures, age-old facilities designed for high-volumes, real or near-time performance visibility, etc. all makes it hard to practice lean. As the story today is different the lean approach to be applied should be also different.  Even if there is a change in the senior leadership, management should ask successors to continue lean efforts with same level of importance as it was. With globalization, for many firms, the business operations are global. Hence, the facilities should be redesigned for ‘high-volume, high-product mix’, so that lean application becomes feasible. Globalization has also given rise to a multi-cultural challenge.  A huge challenge, which if ignored will simply jeopardize the lean success. Above all, ensuring early and continuous results is critical to instill faith among employees regarding lean practices.  Further, it keeps the drive on by continuously motivating and involving employees. Technology enablers that forms critical support all the way through shouldn’t be ignored. In a nutshell, the mantra to transform lean is ‘people, culture and commitment.’