Top 3 Pieces of Advice for Lean Implementation

By Al Norval

It’s quite common for people to ask me for advice on how to best implement Lean. Often though, they are asking for the wrong reasons. In reality they are asking for a “Silver Bullet”. I could translate their question into “Please give me some advice on how to simply implement Lean so that it’s not so much hard work”

I’m sorry to say, there is no answer to that question. Implementing Lean is hard work. It involves changing the culture of the organization and changing the organizational norms that have been built up over time and that just isn’t going to happen overnight. So I answer the question with some thoughts on how best to do it. Here’s the list for you.

1. Go to Gemba
2. Try Something
3. Share the Learning

Let’s examine these one by one:

1. Go to Gemba. One of the fundamental pillars of Lean is problem solving using the scientific method. But before we can problem solve we need to fully understand the current condition. We can try to do this from a computer screen, pretending the computer sees all and knows all but a better way to grasp the situation and understand what is really happening is to get out of the office and go see for yourself. Data, reports and computers can always twist things but you can always trust the facts that you observe with your own eyes. Go to Gemba with an open mind, asking questions, particularly “Why”. Return to Gemba when you discover things you don’t know in your problem solving and get additional facts. Each time you do so, you’ll get a deeper understanding of what is really happening.


2. Try Something. It amazes me how many people are afraid to try things. Often they are worried about trying things without having the right answer and question what would happen if they are wrong. This worry translates into a hesitancy to taking action and instead of trying things, people sit around wasting time debating endlessly. The basis of the scientific method is trying things with uncertain outcomes. We use a hypothesis to set up a test so we can easily determine if our trials worked or not. An old Chinese proverb says “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”. Start and you’ll be amazed at what happens.


3. Share the Learning. The advantage of the scientific method is that we learn from what works and we learn from what doesn’t work. The great news is we learn both ways. The key is to share the learning with the rest of the organization. Most organizations are reluctant to do this but if we only share what did work we limit the learning of the rest of the organization and someone else is bound to try again and suffer the same fate. Sharing leads to lifelong learning and growing body of intellectual wealth in the organization.

Three pieces of advice. All sound easy but take hard work. There is no shortcut or easy path.

Make sense?

Cheers

How to Measure Lean?

By Al Norval

One question I get asked by most organizations I deal with is – How do you measure a Lean Implementation?

The background usually goes like this; management is funding a Lean Transformation and wants to ensure they get a return on their investment. They know how much the cost side of the equation is and so management wants to know how much they are saving. They can then decide whether to continue or not based on the numbers they get.

It’s interesting since there are several mental models at work here. The first one is:

I can manage the business by the numbers so give me some numbers.

and

A Lean Transformation can be reduced to a set of financial results.

The next step usually involves setting up elaborate systems to track savings, both bottom line savings and avoided costs or soft savings. This leads to the ensuing arguments of Inventory savings vs. expense savings and Capital vs. partial head count avoided all of which lead to huge savings but as one frustrated company President I talked to said “At the end of the year my pockets are still empty, nothing is hitting the bottom line”.

What people forget is that Lean fundamentally is a growth strategy that goes like this. If we take waste out of the process and provide more value to our customers, we will sell more and be able to use the additional volume to fill in the unused capacity we have generated through the waste reductions. It’s a benevolent cycle based on providing more value to Customers. If we are only measuring savings, we only see part of the equation.

As organizations realize this, they typically move onto measuring the lean implementation as an in-process measure. Usually, the measure is some form of radar chart with the radar representing various tools, often up to 30 different tools, on a 1-5 scale. This forces operational units to implement tools based on the scoring system whether they need to or not. The problem with this approach is tools are easy to measure but they don’t measure thinking and Lean is based on thinking according to the scientific method.

So, what’s the best way to measure lean?

For an in-process measure I like to use the Lead time of a process, the sum of all the value added and non-value added steps in a process. Taking waste out reduces the lead time. Lead time then becomes a good proxy for how lean a process is. For an end of pipe measure I don’t use any special measures. I look at Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost and if the organization is meeting its targets and is meeting them by using Lean in the execution of their plans, then they’re doing fine. Of course, this is confirmed by Going to Gemba and checking.

My bottom line - use Lean to close a gap in a business need by engaging people to reduce waste and provide more value to Customers. Measure the value proposition; you can’t go wrong starting with the Customer.

Cheers