Provoking reflexion on the term "lean" and a few examples what happenend since invented.

In my last article I provoked already a lot with questioning the importance of OEE. This time I even go further.

You need to know, that I am not a self-declared lean guru, I haven′t written lean books, I haven′t interviewed half of the Toyota workforce, and I am not Japanese. I only have more than 25 years of experience in manufacturing of which 21 years I am learning/ implementing TPS. (I intentionally try to do not call it Lean anymore). And this is surely not at all a discussion about, that there is something better out there, like SixSigma or TOC or whatever.

So, is there a chance, that we do not call it lean anymore?

I know, for the huge lean community, that is certainly really a provoking question!

Lean is one of, if not even the most used term in the past 30 years, if it comes to organizational and process improvement strategies. For some people, there is nothing else but lean. I hope, they do not get too angry with me.

So what is the problem?

The problem is, that we see many (as far as I am concerned close to 100%) unsuccessful attempts of lean implementations and I see more and more faces making a grimace, when the term lean is mentioned. So why is this?

I see several reasons, here are a few of them: 

No. 1: The “if it works there, it has to work here as well”- approach

Sometimes we see something running very successful in other places. Of course, we like to know what it is and what they have done to achieve it. The problem is, that we have absolutely no clue what they have really done to get there. We are simply too far away to understand, what truly made the difference. Sometimes, the successful company cannot not even express, what they actually made them successful. This is a general problem and is of course not specific to lean. 

No. 2: Lost in translation or observation

The original Japanese books were translated into English, to be then later translated into all other languages like German, Spanish, Italian, or whatever…..

A typical example is the term “Muda”, which was translated into waste. I am sure, we all saw people (and so did I) running around saying, that some departments/ functions are waste (or non-added value) or what they do is waste. This surely starts a highly motivated discussion. The real meaning of muda is much more like “something is done all for nothing”, which I believe is starting a much better discussion, as it attacks the circumstances/conditions rather than a person or people in a department. You may say, this is just semantics, but I believe it is important and it often led to issue No. 3.    

No. 3: Misinterpretation

The term lean was misinterpreted by many people (including myself), leading to very misleading concepts, ideas and initiatives. Typical examples are things like flat hierarchies, direct to indirect ratios, focus on headcount reduction, metric insanity, coloured belt “experts”, benchmarking, kaizen workshop inflation, etc.

No. 4: Copying the visual things only

Copying what was seen at other places (sometimes self-declared best practice plants), rather than understanding the underlying principles and working out solutions for your company, your processes, your products and your business model together with your people. This is something, which is frequently driving a wedge between your “lean experts” and your people.

No. 5: Unhealthy impatience

Unhealthy impatience, which focuses on achieving short term results before actually eliminating the root causes in order to get truly sustainable results. Unhealthy impatience also led to the “implement TPS tools quickly”- approach, rather than deeply understanding your situation and to know what you really need. Unhealthy impatience also very often leads to issue No. 6.

No. 6: Level of instability

Many companies I have seen so far are highly instable. Many of the more advanced TPS tools simply will not work in such an environment. Here the focus has to be getting stable first and in many cases this is much more about technical problems and organizational problems. A very good example is, requiring from people to fill in the hourly production table, even if the instability is that high, that there is no chance at all, that the target hourly output can be even met for one hour during a month and the problems are so obvious, that you cannot expect at all, that somebody documents or even measures that. People simply do not like to document or measure the F***ING OBVIOUS.

No. 7: Inconsistency

Following up on issue No. 5, the next one is about inconsistency. What do I mean with inconsistency? Let′s say, that after some hard work, we have reached a level of basic stability and now (to follow up with the example used in issue No. 5) we require consistent use of the hourly production table. All fine, the only problem is, that the hourly production table is only effective, if there is enough supervision and technical support, reacting in a timely manner in case of problems, causing not getting the required hourly output. The problem is, that people do not like to get a task, which is just about following an instruction or a rule. They need to understand the purpose and need to see the sense and effectiveness behind something.    

This is surely not all, but a few of the first things coming to my mind, when I think about the term lean and why people very often make a grimace, when they hear the word.

By the way, the number of faces making grimaces will also soon be noticed, when other terms like Industry4.0, Digitalization, Agile,…. are mentioned. We simply haven′t done our homework and still have much bigger and deeper problems in our organizations. 

And by the way, to call it TOCLEANSIXSIGMA or LEANSIXSIGMA does not make a difference.

And now, let the shitstorm start ))))))), but this article does not intend to tell anybody what to do or not what to do. The only purpose is generating a hopefully good discussion.

#lean,#fakelean,#holisticbusinessexcellence