Way of Thinking & Lean
Hello colleagues and welcome back to another episode of the Lean Series. As you may have noticed, now that the time in between publications are a case of a probability distribution identification study, I no longer use the term "weekly" 😁
Moving forward after this chilly statistics joke😀 , let us focus on today's topic, which is about how our way of thinking is related to lean deployments and is lean transition really a technical one ?
When we talk about lean in different circles and from different points of view, people most often start to talk about the tools, adding bits and pieces of phrases in the discussion and trying to look like the good pupil. This is actually the result of years and years spent by incorrect consultation from different sources that try to mimic the TPS. Especially the focus on the tools, methods and phrases, idealizing TPS and copying implementations have resulted in a dogmatic understanding of lean which is quite the opposite actually. Just think; if lean was all about applying a set of rules, how could Taiichi Ohno come up with it in the first place? There were no rules, no TPS, no presentations at that time, just people trying to think of finding ways to survive in a difficult market condition and against a very strong competition.
This dogmatic understanding triggers the belief that Lean is a set of rules , defined by a set of experts and applied and presented to management. This is really the worst place to be in. Quoting from Shingo, "lean is a way of thinking, not a list of things to do". If it was that simple, all companies would download the information and simply upload it to their system. Quite the opposite, the real difficulty resides in changing the thought patterns of people in lean deployments.
In doing so, we need to break certain ways of thinking in our organization, even if it can be painful in the beginning. Of course there are many techniques to facilitate a smooth transition but it is my expert opinion that the move from a traditional way of management to lean, at least within my experience, does not look quite like the beautiful presentation days we see around where everybody presents nice cute projects and try to look lean that day. The moment of truth begins when you ask a manager to change a process or a supervisor to periodically control an equipment or ask people on what to improve and face a deep silence. Therefore a lean deployment is not a simple change in optimization of production, but it is a complicated process of rebuilding an organization and it has to be supported by HR, operations, finance ,sales and numerous other functions (holistic) under a defined roadmap, via actually changing rules governing the people, supported by all levels of management and steered periodically towards a target. You need to change how people are rated in performance reviews, how they are treated when they go for an opinion or make a mistake, how people communicate with their managers and coworkers , how your leadership behaves in daily issues and this really involves pain points. We can discuss this issue in deeper detail in another episode. For today's topic I will mention three very easily addressed issues in ways of thinking that needs to be changed immediately.
1- How do people collaborate in your organization ? When everybody is the captain of their own ship, what will we do when the water starts to spread on board? Traditional management involves a zero sum game where departments try to optimize their own surrounding and refuse to help or get involved in other matters. This situation has to change because lean is all about the flow in the value stream . From my perspective, any behavior in contradiction to constructive collaboration must be decisively stopped by upper management . This can be unpopular with the department involved at the time but it has to be done and explained clearly to all involved, so that the correct behavior is set around the organization.
2-What is Kaizen ? If people think that Kaizen is not their job, you are in square zero (not one 😀) Back in Deming's time, during the start of the Total Quality Management approach, people thought that quality was the job of quality department. On the contrary, if we quote from Deming himself, "Quality is everyone's responsibility". Just like that Kaizen has to be led with a trained workforce, under whatever structure that is fit to your organization but as a daily strife to achieve a state of ongoing changes for the better. To be able to do this you need to bring certain aspects together , like a defined method of workshops for defining projects; project structures as in six sigma, A3 or a custom structure; workshops at shop floor, idea management, rewarding, detailed reaction to deviations at the shop floor, set of rules to adhere to lean principles etc. The only thing that you should avoid is getting projects done by external sources (experts or consultants ), even if they reside in a department within your organization.
3-Management by Assumptions: The Gemba approach is another victim to incorrect understanding of lean. Genchi genbutsu, the real place, is promoted to be the location where you must go for improvements simply because you can actually see and experiment there and this makes it easiest to grasp what is going on. So being a gemba fan does not mean going to the shop floor, chat around and boast about being on the floor, it is all about getting facts. To overcome a problem or change a process step you may need to go to Gemba or do some number crunching, maybe observe the process, talk to field personnel, do some analysis or a combination of all as needed simply to understand and infer the most with facts. People have to respect facts in order to build an improvement environment, not quick clever assumptions.
Lean transition is a journey not a destination. Therefore without firm and decisive steps in place at the beginning, your organization will not achieve much. Your steps may be small at the beginning but what actually matters is the direction 😀
