4 Tips for Success When Implementing Lean

Lean Manufacturing is a business improvement philosophy that has developed over many years (as well as a collection of lean manufacturing tools), it is a method to better focus your business on the true needs of the customer to help you prevent waste from being built into your system. When properly implemented, lean manufacturing provides many advantages, which include improving flow (material, people, information, and work) and eliminating waste.

Lean has been around since the late eighties/ early nineties, but despite the enormous popularity of Lean, the track record for successful implementation of the methodology is spotty at best. Companies still make mistakes when implementing Lean.

These mistakes are generally due to simple misunderstandings of the Lean principles, but when something goes wrong, you will not reap the full benefits, and incorrect use of Lean can actually make a situation worse rather than better.

In my experience there are 4 tips for implementing Lean with success:

Create a Strategic Plan Instead of a Project Plan

Lean must first start by deploying a crystal-clear vision all the way down to the entire organization of the company. Companies must determine ahead of time what the vision and direction will be. A proper strategy must assign clear responsibilities and show what resources are to be committed. All employees of the company must clearly understand the company vision and direction and must also understand all KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and measurements used. Metrics and timelines must be defined. Management must decide what core elements are to be deployed and the order of deployment. They also must determine where to start and how Lean will expand throughout the operation.

Focus on Culture Change

Lean is about people. All successful and sustainable business change starts with top management (leadership team). Culture by design requires changing the way that people think and work. That’s difficult to do, because people get comfortable with the way they are. You must establish a foundation so that change can happen. The definition of ‘win’ has to be shared and understood by everyone.

A new lean culture will not develop unless the organization’s leadership team is willing to model and be the examples of the new behaviors.

Address Business Problems

Don’t blindly copy others. Some companies think they will get desirable effects by applying Lean tools that others have gotten great achievements. Tools do not solve problem but rather people do. It is not about the tools it’s how they are applied. A large number of organizations have failed to produce the desired results from the direct and prescriptive application of Lean tools. The tools themselves have been proven to work in many situations. The difference must then be in how the tools were applied, their appropriateness, but not the tools themselves.

Successful implementation of any Lean tool must be closely related to the management philosophy. So we can’t succeed by imitating and copying practices of others indiscriminately, it must be combined with local culture. It is important to continually reevaluate your lean manufacturing efforts. Even when you take the long-term into consideration, changes in your business plan, demand levels and industry trends can create possibilities to further improve your factory.

Train Everyone

The key to implementing any new idea or concept is training. It must be top down training so that everyone is on the same page. The more understanding of what lean manufacturing is all about, why you are implementing it and the expected benefits from it, the more likely you are to get buy-in.

It is very important that everyone in the company become committed to lean culture. In order to make the culture successful, managers and employees need to be aware of waste within the company and be prepared to attack and eliminate it. Making sure that the employees are empowered to do this, not just pushing the job off on someone else, is imperative in the proper function of lean culture.

Ensuring everyone is on the same page will help to avoid conflict. At the same time, it is important to ensure people have the space in which to think about what improvements they think need making.

Implementing a Lean manufacturing program is a continuous process. The success of one stage builds up the momentum for the next one. Most of the implementation challenges stem from human resistance and incomprehension of advanced work tools. Companies can achieve accelerated success by instilling a culture of change among employees, and can also leverage digital resources to improve data collection, analysis and utilization.