Strategy Archives

Let’s Implement Lean

It is sometimes argued that you cannot “implement” Lean. It is criticized as suggesting that becoming a Lean organization is done in a single discrete step. It may give the impression that it is something that is done by “others”, and that Lean is imposed upon the rest of the organization by these “others”. And that “implementing” hints at a focus on only the tools of Lean. But does this mean that when some speak of implementing Lean, they are completely wrong? That they are “tool heads”? I think the reality is somewhat more nuanced. A post about implementing, transforming, deploying, copying, and adapting as part of becoming Lean.
(more…)

How Lean’s Just-in-Time Builds Financial Resilience

Meanwhile, we have all been bombarded with posts and articles that are quick to expose the Just-in-Time and Lean approach to management as one of the major causes of the lack of medical supplies, so much needed in the battle against COVID-19. Well-respected journals and university professors alike have ignorantly equated Just-in-Time and Lean with low, even too little inventory; how naive. I have also written about this misunderstanding before: Resilient Just-in-Time: An Oxymoron?. But why is it that Lean companies, and particularly Toyota, have been witnessed to withstand crises like these, as the best? And to recover as the fastest of all? And to come out of a crisis stronger than ever before? Remember that Toyota was born from a crisis, rose to stardom during the oil crisis, and has been growing stronger through the financial crisis and the earthquakes during the last decade. This is because Lean and JIT are so much more than the mere logistics that some appear to only see, as it is part and parcel of Toyota’s way to build financial resilience.
(more…)

Resilient Just-in-Time: An Oxymoron?

And again, we have a crisis on our hands that raises questions about just-in-time or JIT. Currently, the measures to restrain the coronavirus have led to Chinese factories being closed. Consequently, supplies to other factories around the globe have come under pressure. Delays in supply could shutdown factories with massive financial consequences. But this is not a new situation of course. We have seen very similar discussions in the case of hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, nuclear disasters and, also recently, the BREXIT. So, is there a balance to be struck between just-in-time and resilience? Or can you build a resilient JIT (just-in-time) system? (more…)

Organizing for Kaizen: Chronos and Kairos Time

Finding time for Kaizen. That is a question is regularly get. Continual improvement sounds very interesting and promising as a concept, but when it gets practical, many organizations struggle to find a way to make it practical for themselves. They can’t see themselves sacrificing valuable time to improvement, as productivity will suffer. Or they expect Kaizen to happen all by itself. And when they find out that it isn’t happening, they dismiss the topic, and state that it doesn’t work in their environment and culture. Or they invest the task of Kaizen with a special group of elite improvement agents and find out that change is slow and produces little returns, after which the group is dismantled after the first financial pressure presents itself. So how do we need to organize for Kaizen? (more…)

Productivity or Kosu: Faster or in Less Time?

One of the ongoing discussions I have on the genba, is the discussion on what productivity is, and how to measure it to spark and track improvement in productivity. Productivity is not the same as efficiency. Unfortunately, people commonly throw both terms into the conversation without properly defining what they mean with these words. During my tenure at a global tier one automotive supplier in the early 2000s, management decided to introduce a new measure, called Kosu (or Kousou). I was skeptical at the beginning but have become a huge fan since. I’ll try to explain how Kosu can help you to improve productivity. (more…)

Setting Targets: Control, Tighten and Shift

Nowadays, you almost trip over the whiteboards scattered around the shop floors of many organizations. In most cases, these boards show data on a set of indicators linked to themes like safety, quality, timeliness, speed, productivity and team morale. The idea is that through this data, teams can track whether they are achieving their objectives. To do so, these indicators should not only show the data on actuals (i.e., the voice of the process), but also specific targets reflecting the area’s objectives. Unfortunately, this is much less common. So how then do we track the team’s contribution to the organization’s goals? And even when I do see targets, I sometimes wonder how they were set. A post on setting targets. (more…)

Shikumi: System-Based Lean Transformation

On the web, there is a palpable buzz of failed or unsuccessful Lean initiatives (or organizations that fail Lean if you prefer that point of view). No wonder, to be honest, as many of these initiatives can at best be characterized as programs. And more often they are even no more than a collection of disjointed projects.

Staff is trained, external consultants are brought in – often trained by another external consultant in another company going through a similar “program” – and off we are. We start identifying waste and we might even create a current state value stream map. Enough potential to fill an action list covering several pages, and so our Lean program is born.

What a joke! In doing so, a Lean initiative will never transcend the character of being only a program: a collection of projects and actions to eliminate problems. And calling these projects and actions “kaizens” really doesn’t make it more Lean. And this is only further emphasized by pursuing the apparently required “quick wins” to win over the company’s management. What is the alternative? A system-based Lean transformation, sometimes referred to as Shikumi. (more…)

Lean’s Many Faces: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Lean can present itself in many ways. To some, Lean appears as a grassroots initiative and as bottom-up improvement by everyone, everywhere, anytime. Others experience Lean more as a top-down initiative, driven by management and accompanied by standards, audits and specialists. Indeed, Lean can be seen as a many-faced phenomenon; almost as if Lean has a Multiple Personality Disorder.

So, what is Lean’s true face? How do we explain Lean’s different personalities to the workforce? (more…)

Lean Equipment: Five Considerations for a Monument-Free Factory

Within the context of Lean thinking, quite a lot of attention is given to the proper and smart maintenance of equipment and installations; and for a good reason. Poor maintenance, typically resulting in unplanned down-time, rejects and loss of speed, is still an important cause of poor delivery reliability towards customers. And as a result, indirectly, it may also well be the reason behind high inventory levels and excessive overhead cost to still try being on-time.

Total Productive Maintenance or TPM, therefore, also is a well-known theme among capital-intense (semi-)process industries like for instance chemicals, plastics, metals, energy, paper, food and fast-moving consumer goods. And in more and more cases, TPM (either independently or as a part of Lean) is already well under way. But in this post, I don’t want to focus too much on the phase the equipment is already in operation, but rather before we even install the equipment, viz., the design, choice and purchase of the equipment. If we don’t, lots of problems may later arise because of a lack of Lean thinking in the design and purchasing process of equipment. Time for a change therefore; time to move towards Lean equipment and a monument-free future! (more…)

Using Rubrics to Assess Your Lean Progress

Hoshin kanri involves the identification and deployment of various initiatives (or countermeasures) to eliminate major obstacles to reach the organization’s goal and to further improve the organization’s performance. Typically, organizations subsequently track their performance to see whether they are actually improving. In hoshin kanri these performance indicators are called “control items”. But what organizations track less is whether they are actually deploying what they set out to deploy. These so called “check items” are often missing. And exactly this is one of the key aspects in which hoshin kanri differs from traditional management-by-objectives or MBO. (more…)