Why aren't there more successes?

Lean manufacturing allows manufacturers to quickly react to changes in customer demand and do it with little inventory. Gone are the days when companies could stockpile large quantities of raw materials, load up production with work, and stack up finished goods. Creating the lean supply chain - by streamlining the business and production processes to significantly reduce cycle time, decrease inventories, lower costs, and increase customer service - has become the mandate for survival.

Walking through the shop floors in recent times, I have found that many of today’s decision-makers in the manufacturing arena take pride in assigning themselves to the elite association of lean manufacturing organisations. They use jargons and fancy terminologies liberally, even though the actual philosophy has not yet sunk in. Certain companies show off their single bin or two bin system created at the delivery end (mostly on the insistence of their customers to avoid shortages), but there is no real relation to the lean philosophy here. One company has taken all its overproduction and arranged the assemblies in a newly purchased rack, and described it as Kanban waiting for customer orders! There are other organisations that buy books on the subject, and managers who try to duplicate the forms described in the books. In doing so, what they do not realise is that they are probably a different industry compared to the narration; their demand patterns are different and so are their varying volumes and variables.

Such issues make one ponder over questions such as - Many want to be in the league of successful lean manufacturers; why do most fall short of their aspirations? Why aren’t there more successes? Following are a few explanations:

Key principles

A common experience among the teachers and consultants who teach the lean concepts is that, although the concepts are simple to understand, people are unable to duplicate them on their own. The key principles of lean are easy to understand, but difficult to integrate into daily managerial behaviour. A Japanese Sensei (master teacher) once said, “I can show you how to do this, but you can’t do it.” What he actually meant was that one could get the idea, but to actually do it one would have to do a number of key things contrary to the way one had done them for years. Instinct and gut feel are alone not enough; it needs dedication, persistence, perseverance and staying focused on the goal to achieve it. Changing habits is hard in the beginning, but it is only by inculcating new habits one can build a lean culture.

For instance, the idea of one-piece flow sounds straightforward. But do you have the administrative processes that actually operate in a one-piece-flow fashion? It’s easy to talk of ‘continuous improvement’, but do we really believe that improvement can be continuous? We do not actually believe that the whole point of a lean transformation should be to build a lean-learning culture, where continuous improvement is what is expected everyday - forever.

Transforming the organisation that followed group technology concept to one of the first to adopt lean manufacturing was a great learning experience. Changing layouts to adapt single piece flow saw throughput times come down from 45-60 days to as low as two days or even less. The impossible became possible. A great amount of learning, teaching, training and improvising happened in the process. The pitfalls were not always easy to cope with, but the results kept us going.

A mixed bag of learning

Though there are Senseis out there, most of your leadership lessons will come from attempting lean transformations. It takes a long time to learn lean tools at a fundamental level. When we began to transform our manufacturing way back in 1990, we had no real Sensei and so we thought of organised experiments. Today’s organisations that want to build a lean culture can benefit by seeking to work with those who have been there. The basic learning element for TPS (Toyota Production System) is the weeklong Jishukin or Voluntary Study event. Back then in MKL (Mysore Kirloskar Ltd) we called it a Kaizen event or rapid continuous improvement (RCI) event. (Of course, the ‘voluntary’ part was not in the same concept as probably TPS, but the goal was market leadership and we used lean manufacturing as our competitive strategy - ref: ‘The Lean Mindset’, Indian Management Nov2004.) It is through these RCI events that everybody, from manager to workmen, learnt to apply lean tools and concepts. And it’s only from this kind of experience that you actually come to believe the core principles of lean manufacturing.

I do not expect someone who has not had such experiences to be a good Sensei at the tools level of knowledge or in administrator, product development and production processes. As students of lean, we always opt for a shortcut which is a big mistake.

I have read that organisations like the GM -Toyota joint venture NUMMI reinstated the requirement for all managers to get personal experience each year as members of weeklong improvement teams. Some very deep thinking and observation went into the format of what Toyota old timers call the ‘5 days and 1 night’ Kaizen/RCI event format. Going back in time I remember we had lean learning sessions every week for the managers and workmen. This approach is still the primary lean learning method. If your real goal is to build a long-term learning culture, you should keep in mind the learning value of every Jishukin or RCI event for the members of your organisation. It’s the growing hidden asset on your balance sheet.

Leadership

A third way to answer the question of ‘why aren’t there more lean successes?’ comes down to leadership. In business schools and other places you are trained to manage, rather than lead. You are taught, for instance, that delegation is a skill that must be used to be a successful manager. And this statement is true in many ways — you cannot do everything and expect to manage a large organisation.

But it can be false in the lean setting if you are undertaking something that involves new levels of learning, and no one in your organisation has ever been there before. As a senior leader, you need to get some ‘learning’, or you won’t have the minimal knowledge necessary to manage builds in this changed thinking (‘Changed Thinking - A Eureka Moment in MMT October 2005 issue). One cannot expect the lower rung to adopt lean thinking while at the top one wants to go by their old cultural ways and thinking. There will be a clash, and you will not get the desired results. As a CEO has said: “I have been hearing a lot of technical terminologies like ‘single minute die changing’, ‘self inspection’ and a lot of other things… It was exciting in the initial phase as I thought I would be ‘learning’ more about it in days to come, but we are still ‘talking’ about same concepts and ideal situations… Now I feel I could have read them in an average production philosophy book as well… Change management and weekly lectures are not taking us anywhere as we are still not able to do specifics.”

What could be happening? Change is uncomfortable. And habits die hard. People don’t want to change for a variety of reasons. Commonly, they don’t want to get out of their comfort zones. There are those who do not know how to deal with the change. Here, while he understands that people are acting in their old and undesired ways, what he probably overlooks is that they might be seeking his acceptance of their actions, or create situations which force him to accept old ways. Also when marketers make overstated commitments beyond the competence and capability of the manufacturing set up to meet commitments, it unlocks doors to potential failures and gives rise to frustration. It is usual to find that the marketing and production are not integrated. Going back, MKL had developed two tools to overcome this situation: one being the predictability tool and the other, the delivery tool. Both these were measured on a daily and weekly basis and continuously adjusted to balance the market demand with the intrinsic capacity to meet those demands.

You need to be hands on to manage the lean transformation. In addition, something that is transformational by definition involves a lot of change management. You cannot delegate change management to someone who has not been there before, is lower in the hierarchy, and does not have the clout needed to manage the politics of change. Given the magnitude of change, the team wants to know that the leader is also going there.

Culture

Simply said, culture is what we do and how we do it. The leader always builds the culture. What and how we do is based on what and how we think. Lean thinking is also a culture. It’s got to do with the thinking at the top. Lean will only succeed if the senior management builds in this changed thinking. One cannot expect the lower rung to adopt lean thinking while at the top one wants to go by their old cultural ways and thinking. There will be a clash, and you will not get the desired results.

In the real world

Here is an example of a CEO who after listening to the practices of the more successful organisations has a mental block in believing it. Perhaps he is unable to visualise it. Although he has got the idea, he is either lacking in leadership prowess to see the change through or is unable to manage the politics of change. Since nobody in the organisation has been where they want to go, is he making an effort to learn? There comes a time when frustration is likely to show its ugly face for various reasons, typically when the organisation structure below you is slow to change. Intensified training and staying focused on the goal alone will get him there. Patience is a tested virtue in any transformation process.

Managing change or change management is the role at the top, one that cannot be delegated. A CEO is expected to lead a winning team, and not expect the team to play and win with him applauding as a spectator. The concept of a non-playing captain does not work here.

In the medium and small sectors where there is more than one partner, the threat to implementing change comes from the conflict of intent and actions being different. This happens where intent may be in the new paradigm and the thinking has gone to sleep in the old paradigm. The seed of lean thinking has to incubate right at the top.

(* For references ‘The Lean Mindset’ & ‘Changed Thinking’ contact the author)