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Lean manufacturing has proliferated over the last two decades since Toyota sparked a revolution while on its way to becoming the world’s largest carmaker. Today’s lean production systems are intermixed with process quality systems like Six Sigma and kaizen continuous improvement practices. Although lean manufacturing has been adopted almost universally in the face of today’s business and economic realities, some organizations are more successful practitioners than others.
The pioneering Toyota Production System has inspired other lean and continuous improvement systems throughout manufacturing. Lean remains both a science and an art; in order to be successful with it long term, a company must not forget the art of building a cultural transformation among its people into lean thinkers and doers. That was the message delivered by lean manufacturing experts at the recent Atlantic Design and Manufacturing industry event in Philadelphia.
“Lean sometimes hasn’t delivered as advertised,” noted Terry Norris, CEO of Knoxville, Tenn.-based LeanConsultingWorks LLC. Norris is a U.S. Air Force veteran who helped establish the armed force’s continuous process improvement infrastructure in Europe as a lean program manager. A usual reason companies struggle to implement lean, Norris said, is that it is treated as “just another program” added on top of other programs.
For lean to succeed, it should not be treated as an isolated program, but rather as an enterprise-wide strategy and, most important, a continuous journey, Norris said. And like any organizational strategy, it must be linked to a corporate vision that’s propagated by the CEO all the way through management and down to production-line employees. Going lean is as much a social engineering project as it is an industrial engineering one.
“It is a people transformation,” Norris noted. “It’s an ongoing journey to change their mindset and the culture of the organization to become lean thinkers. If you’re serious about lean, know that improvements are very rapid but isolated and overall progress is slow. It takes time to [achieve].”
“Without true clarity of vision, you will have chaos,” and eventual failure, echoed Izzy Galicia, president and CEO of San Francisco-based Incito Consulting Group, who began his career with Toyota and was trained in the Toyota Production System in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Galicia, also a Six Sigma Black Belt, leads a lean transformation consultancy with 120 consultants around the world, counting Nike, BMW, Pepsi, and Del Monte among its Fortune 500 clients.
“The goal of any NFL team is to win the Super Bowl,” Galicia said, using a pro sports example of an organizational vision. Every lean initiative needs a “true north,” he said — a goal around which the manufacturing company inspires and empowers its team members. “The workforce needs to have the vision of the goal.”
And if there is a business case for lean manufacturing by management, it must have a “burning platform” to present to leadership. “Give C-level the pain points,” he said, recommending the use of a quick-hitting bullet-point list.
Galicia said companies that attempt to establish lean and other sociotechnical manufacturing methodologies but fail to do so usually place an emphasis on technical systems over building the self-sustaining culture of continuous improvement and problem-solving prevalent at Toyota.
The driving force behind the Toyota Production System was the deeply ingrained set of values, principles, and manufacturing ideals known as The Toyota Way, which was passed down from leadership to the plant floor and from generation to generation in the company. The Toyota Way, in turn, was driven by kaizen and the principles of valuing and developing people.
“Eighty percent of organizations implementing kaizen fail after Year One,” Galicia said. “Many kaizen teams have a life expectancy because there’s no link to any sort of corporate vision, especially when the focus is on cost-savings. People stop working when they make improvements that eliminate their own jobs.”
The uptake of what he describes as “true kaizen” relies on behavior change. Any improvement methodology that’s put in place, whether it is lean or Six Sigma, should be used to build the business. “What’s the needle you want to actually move?” he said. “You want to be quicker, cheaper, higher quality — to be as agile as possible — not for the sake of just eliminating waste. If you are just focused on cutting, you lose sight of the business.”
Although there is no sugarcoating the journey to achieving a lean enterprise potentially goes through labor reductions — which is why lean practices often run into headwinds — Norris suggests that companies rightsize themselves first before embarking on lean initiatives. “People are leery of losing their jobs,” Norris noted, adding that comments like “Not that again” and “It’s not my job,” expressed by management and line workers, are common. “Expect resistance from all levels. You may already know where to expect resistance based on previous experiences.”
Norris said companies that can promise preserving their workforce while being lean should do so. “Tell people they won’t lose their jobs,” he said bluntly.
Compliance is “a challenge,” Galicia admitted. Before lean as a corporate philosophy is sustained, there must be what he calls a procedural change, which includes awareness, development, installation, and, most important, compliance on the factory floor. That is followed by behavioral change, driven by usage and understanding, and, finally, cultural change.
The transition from procedural to cultural is achieved when continuous improvement happens organically at the line with people, managers, and teams closest to production taking proactive charge. An organization has then achieved one of the embodiments of Toyota’s philosophy — and what Galicia calls “inverting the triangle.”
“Your people are not calling the Six Sigma Black Belts every time there is a problem, in a culture of seeking help rather than problem-solving,” he said. “Instead, you’ve built a culture of problem-solvers.”
“Why does Toyota let other companies (and competitors) into its plants?” Norris asked, in showcasing its production system. “Because the real power behind lean is in the people.”
Culled from separate presentations by Norris and Galicia at Atlantic Design and Manufacturing, here are best practices and action steps for instilling a sustaining lean and continuous-improvement enterprise.
- Make a fundamental business case for lean — a burning platform.
- Set a clear lean vision and strategy statement, announced by the head of the organization.
- Have a communication strategy and plan for management down to the line.
- Assemble a core lean improvement team that is integrated with operations personnel, with clear roles and responsibilities.
- Make compliance with the strategy mandatory throughout the enterprise but have motivational and training systems.
- Formulate the tactical plan. This would include the implementation of a plethora of actual lean and process improvement systems, which could be but not limited to: enterprise-wide value stream analysis and mapping, A3 management processes, standardized work, leader standard work, 5S organization, gemba walks, kaizen events, establishment of key performance indicators (KPIs) and scorecards, etc.
- Base management decisions on long-term philosophy — even at the expense of short-term goals.
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