Aug 10 2013
Guidelines for Fast Lean Transformation | M. Zinser & D. Ryeson | HBR Blog
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
Scoop It just brough my attention to this 2 1/2-year old article by BCG consultants Michael Zinser and David Ryeson. Their key point is that a successful Lean implementation must start with a small number of well-chosen, pilot projects, and I agree.
I do, however, part company with them on two other issues. First, they only speak the language of money, relentlessly bringing up costs, savings, payoffs, metrics and incentives. I understand that this language is familiar and attractive to top management.
The article only cites examples of improvements that have a direct economic impact, but there are many aspects of Lean for which the relationship is indirect. Scoring a goal in tonight’s game has a direct impact on performance; building a championship team doesn’t.
Which brings me to my second disagreement with the authors: there is no consideration in their article of the need to develop the organization’s technical and managerial skills. They are just assumed to be there.
Lean is about developing a team that is able to compete at the highest level in your industry. If you already have such a team, you are probably not looking to implement Lean. If you don’t have it, you can’t start projects as if you did. Instead, you have to focus on projects that your team can do today and that will start it on its way. The biggest payoff and the practically possible do not always match.
This perspective is missing in their guidelines.
See on blogs.hbr.org
Aug 13 2013
The Measure of Efficacy of Spend is Value Adding | Bill Waddell | Manufacturing Leadership Center
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“A writer by the name of Lindsay Levkoff Lynn asserts that a charity should not be measured on the basis of the percentage of its money that goes to the cause for which it exists. “We cannot measure efficacy of spend by looking purely at the ratio of overheads to programme costs,” she says. I was curious as to how someone could not just be wrong, but absolutely, totally, dead wrong about such a subject …. and then I learned that she is a former Bain consultant with a Harvard MBA and it made more sense. Fundamental lean principles are simply not part of her intellectual make-up.
In fact, the percentage of their money that goes to creating value for customers is the overarching measure of not just charities, but every organization.”
While I agree with Bill on measuring a charity by the percentage of its money that goes to the cause for which it exists, I don’t follow him in when he chides Levkoff Lynn for saying that P&G is not purely a manufacturing business but also a marketing giant.
While I am not familiar with P&G, I have consulted in the past for a competitor of theirs in detergents and personal products, and was told that, in this business, if you stop promoting a brand, it dies in six months. I don’t know whether this hypothesis has ever been tested, but the managers held it to be self-evident.
Even is you own a well-known brand in a mature market, you must keep advertising it, offering special discounts, and including toys in boxes. It is a massive direct expense, and it affects the manufacturing process, because the promotional materials are actually more difficult to procure and have longer lead times than the raw materials used to make the product.
See on www.idatix.com
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By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings 0 • Tags: Lean, Manufacturing, Marketing