Mar 8 2012
What support infrastructures do you need for Lean?
Fourth in a series of questions from the Spanish magazine APD (Asociación para el Progreso Directivo). My answer is as follows and, perhaps, your comments will help me make it better:
What kind of Steering Committee, Lean Office, Lean Champions, or Continuous Improvement group do you need to put in place?
Ideally, none. Lean is not supposed to be a career opportunity but instead part of everybody’s job. Over time, it becomes so much “the way we do things” that it no longer needs a name. In reality, all organizations find it necessary to provide some form of organized support. Even Toyota has an Operations Management Consulting Division (OMCD), of about 60 members, that mostly works with suppliers.
But there are many pitfalls to avoid in setting up this kind of support at the right time, and in properly defining its scope. For example, a Lean Office at the corporate level established at the start of Lean implementation is likely to be out of touch with factories and focused on standardization rather than effectiveness. Such an office can easily turn into a Lean inquisition, castigating heretics in factories for using “non-standard” approaches, and stifling the very creativity the company needs to grow its own version of Lean.
Another risk, at the plant level, is to create a Lean Engineering Department responsible for carrying out all Lean projects. This is ineffective for two reasons:
- The people responsible for operating production lines have no ownership in what the Lean Engineering Department has designed. They don’t understand it and have no motivation to make it work.
- The Lean Engineering Department cannot be large enough to do all the work that needs to be done. It just cannot have the bandwidth. Involving the people from operations is not a luxury. They are the only resources available to get the job done.
A successful Lean program starts with a handful of pilot projects. These projects need support from the plant manager personally, and the leadership of an enthusiastic production supervisor, usually with coaching from an outside consultant. As you ramp up from, say, two pilot projects to fifteen projects conducted concurrently in different parts of the plant, you start to need a Steering Committee of the plant manager and his or her direct reports to select projects, set priorities, resolve resource conflicts, and provide a forum for project leaders.
Soon, the organization of Steering Committee meetings, the scheduling of consultant visits and training sessions, the documentation of projects and the promotion of the plant’s program to both internal and external audiences generates enough work for a full-time Lean Champion. As Kevin Hop points out, it can be the start of a group supporting projects, into which engineers and managers rotate for for periods of 6 months to a year between assignments in operations.
At the corporate level, Lean specialists can help plants locate resources and exchange their experience through mutual visits, technical exchange meetings, and on-line collaboration. As Lean skills grow in the company, the corporate group can help spread the knowledge and allow standards to emerge for some activities.
Many manufacturing organizations have borrowed the Black Belt system from Six Sigma to implement Lean, in which 1% of employees receive special training and a certification to work full-time in implementation support. While I am not questioning the effectiveness of this approach for Six Sigma, I have never seen it work for Lean. Instead, I have seen Black Belts frustrated with a position in which they feel they have responsibility without authority.
Mar 8 2012
More Lean bashing in the French press
Through the two following charts from the Curious Cat blog, we can compare France’s manufacturing output to similar countries like Germany and Japan. In population, France is roughly 75% of Germany and 50% of Japan, but in manufacturing output, it is only 50% of Germany and 25% of Japan. Furthermore, France’s manufacturing share of GDP is sinking faster than in other advanced economies.
With French factories an endangered species, one might expect some humility and a willingness to adopt techniques that are recognized worldwide as the state of the art. That is, however, not happening: while the French manufacturing ship is sinking, the mainstream press still describes Lean as “controversial” and a disease to be avoided.
Following is the translation of an article in Le Parisien, dated 3/4/2012:
To respond to such an article, where can we begin? Perhaps what is most fundamental to the ideology behind it is the assumption that true improvement is impossible, and that the only way to increase productivity is to make people work harder. The article equates eliminating wasted motion with eliminating rest for operators, but what kind of rest does an operator get while hand-carrying a car battery over 50 feet? If you eliminate that long carry by presenting the batteries right at the assembly station, you save time and improve ergonomics simultaneously. You win on both counts; there is no tradeoff; it is a genuine improvement.
The article also assumes that increasing productivity leads to job cuts. Why not take this reasoning to its logical conclusion and decrease productivity to create jobs? Let us design production lines so that two people are needed for the job one can currently do. Then we’ll hire 1,000 people rather than 500, all at advanced economy levels of wages and benefits.
How will that work out? Competitors will be thrilled, and the economy will have to do without the contributions the extra 500 people would have made elsewhere. To me, the assumption that it is OK to waste human talent in this fashion is the worst form of disrespect for people.
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By Michel Baudin • Press clippings • 0 • Tags: Lean, Management