Top 10 Reason Why Lean Transformation Fails

I believe when Lean principles are properly understood and applied, the upside for productivity improvements is nearly infinite. I have personally witnessed numerous Lean thinking initiatives that have improved productivity by large amounts (like 40-60%) in short periods of time with minimal expenditures.  The Lean track record is well documented by numerous authors.

Despite the enormous popularity of Lean, the track record for successful implementation of the methodology is spotty at best. Some recent studies say that failure rates for Lean programs range between 50 percent and 95 percent. The basic reason why the implementation of Lean fails at most companies boils down to the culture.

In my experience these are ten reasons why Lean implementation fails:

1. No Strategy

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. 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. Finally, the strategy should anticipate problem and recovery scenarios. This is critical. Companies can fail by attempting too much. They also can fail by attempting too little and assigning the initiative to a "backburner" status.

2. No Leadership Involvement

Lean requires top-to-bottom leadership of a special kind. Lean leaders are firm and inspiring, relentless and resilient, demanding and forgiving, focused and flexible. Above all, they have to be smart and highly respected in the organization. Every successful company has at least one of these leaders. These people must be a passionate part of the Lean leadership team.

3. Relying on Lean Sensei/Champion

Expertise obviously is necessary. So is critical mass. There must be a sufficient amount of knowledge among a sufficient number of people for lean to work initially and spread. Further, the expertise must reside with line people as well as staff. Everyday support must come from important, respected line managers who have the most to gain or lose and have the power and authority to make things happen. Reliance on an outnumbered staff expert who has no line authority to implement lean simply is not realistic. Deployment and implementation can fail before it starts without a strong implementation team

4. Copying Others

Some enterprises think they will get desirable effects by applying Lean tools that others have gotten great achievements. 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.

5. Thinking Lean Is A Tool

Lean implementation can not be treated as a delegated "project." Lean manufacturing is not a project. It is a fundamental change in the value delivery system. Top management must be in front of this.

6. Lack of Customer Focus

Many companies do Lean for internal cost reasons rather than external and customer-focused reasons. The focus of Lean is on providing the customer with more value sooner. Without customer focus, Lean management techniques are difficult to employ.

7. Not Engaging Employees

Employee participation in project decision making is a main principle affecting innovation, productivity, and work satisfaction. Workers typically have more complete knowledge of their work than does management; hence, if workers participate in decision making, decisions will be made with better pools of information.

8. Not Educating Employees

Lean training is crucial, obviously. But the content, level, and depth vary by the company and its needs, activity, and function. It goes back to the business case. Training needs to be appropriate for the Lean elements to be deployed.

9. Lack of Understanding

Most management teams don’t understand Lean. When we don’t understand something it is next to impossible to support it. This lack of understanding of Lean by management allows even the most subtle of things to derail Lean efforts.

10. Conflicting Metrics

Lean requires metrics that focus on the processes of value creation and their associated costs. Traditional cost accounting techniques such as absorption, as well as individual machine and employee performance, can cause a lot of non-Lean behavior. Lean accounting ties directly to financial measures but focuses on performance of the entire value delivery system.

Lean implementation is not simple or easy. However, results show that, when done properly, Lean lives up to its promises. Lean and its elements work. All of the failure modes presented here can be avoided or overcome.

If you want Lean to succeed in your organization, management has to become a student of Lean in order to be a successful sponsor. In other words, you have to apply Lean to your management process first in order to understand how to apply it to others.

Lean Quote: Success Requires Passion in the Face of Failure

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." — Winston Churchill

To err is completely human, so you should not be afraid of the mistakes you may make and of course, you should never hide them. Nobody likes to make mistakes. However, the simple reality of life is that at some point, all of us are going to be wrong. That’s just life. We are going to make mistakes.

Treat every mistake as an opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t feel stupid or doomed forever just because you failed at something. You can always find other opportunities.

A colleague of mine always said, “Learn to fail quickly.” Essentially, if you are going to fail you need to learn to do it quickly in order to get the data (results) that you can use to gradually improve. The faster you get at learning from unforeseen circumstances and outcomes, the faster you can find a solution that truly adds value.

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not improving. Henry Ford said, “Failure is merely an opportunity to begin again knowledgeably.” Failure can be an inevitable stepping-stone to great achievement.

Fear of failure is a genuinely scary thing for many people, and often the reason that individuals do not attempt the things they would like to accomplish. But the only true failure is failure to make the attempt. If you don't try, you gain nothing, and life is too short a thing to waste.

But to have success, management must create an environment where it is safe to fail. Failure is an expected part of the process of finding solutions. If workers feel that they have to “hit one out of the park” every time they come up with an improvement idea, they will be reluctant to provide their ideas. In a Lean environment, failure and success should be met with the same level of enthusiasm and support.

The ability to go through failures without losing enthusiasm starts from a passion, or some form of inner fire. If that’s missing, then every failure is going to be a huge blow able to stop you. If you have passion, than it’s going to be a huge bang able to make you stronger.

Passion is literally the fuel that propels you toward success. Passion allows you to think, feel, focus, act, attract and create the events conditions and circumstances that you most desire to see you through difficult times. Passion is what propels you to begin taking the necessary action steps that will allow you to begin changing your current situation.

Results don’t happen based on what you want, but rather what you desire and a passion for achieving them.

 

Small Teams vs Keeping Everyone Informed

In response to the post “Collaboration Techniques for Moving Ideas & Decisions Forward” a reader on our Facebook page recently asked “How do you reconcile between keeping everyone involved and keeping the team small?”

Highly empowered and effective teams are the key to compete in today’s world of high technology processes, six sigma quality and continuous innovation. We all have roles in our organizations but it is the power of teamwork that makes our endeavors successful. It takes everyone working together on a common goal to be successful in Lean. Teams are the engines that deliver successful process improvements.

Smaller teams are more efficient than larger teams. Smaller teams means being nimble, flexible and hungrier, which help them to be more customer oriented than larger teams and organizations. Small and stable teams over a period of time, develop the togetherness and bonding which large teams can seldom replicate.

Communication and coordination overhead rises dramatically with team size. In the worst possible case where everyone on the project needs to communicate and coordinate with everyone else, the cost of this effort rises as the square of the number of people in the team. That’s such a powerful effect, in fact, that a large team couldn’t possibly hope to achieve the goal of everyone coordinating their effort. But a small team could.

Smaller teams have lesser decision lags, act faster, are quicker to change and provide a good breeding ground for innovation. It’s easier for the smaller teams to look in 'one' direction and communicate effectively than it is for any large group. Also, there's less of pointing fingers, no working in 'silos' and 'escapism', given the small size of the team, which brings in more accountability and ownership. All of this produce more value to the customers, better profitability for the organization and more purpose for the people involved.

Getting the buy in from those who are not participating on the team is important for sustaining the improvement.  When you are part of team you are involved in the solution.  For those who are not we need to make them aware of the improvements the team is making.  If you don't they will naturally resist the improvement.

It is the job of those on the team to share with those who are not. For instance perhaps you have a multi shift operation and you have an operator on second shift participate on the team. It would be their responsibility to share what the team is thinking and the solutions with their second shift colleagues. Any feedback from their colleagues can be brought back to the team meetings for consideration. 

Also, at the end of the team activity there should be a readout to a larger audience. This presentation helps to document and spread the knowledge to the area affected as well as others. Some times this can also take the form of an A3. Many organizations even share these visually in their facility for all to see.  And of course there should be some standard work coming out of the improvement to train everyone to the new way. Keep in mind this is the new standard and not the standard forever.

The last thing I would add is that this concern for involvement only occurs when the activity is large.  As I have said many times Kaizen is not about big events but rather small continuous improvements. In this way small improvement is less disruptive and easier digested.

While we can’t involve everyone in every activity because of efficiency and practicality the methods above can be used to keep them informed. Smaller teams are more efficient but we also know there are many sizes of improvement activities along the Lean journey. Communication and education are the single best levers for change the speed of improvement.  So the best I can offer is to keep learning and deducing to practice with an eye for improvement.

Simple Steps to a Lean Email

Today I am pleased to present a guest post by Tony Ferraro of Creative Safety Supply (one of our sponsors). Tony talks about email best practices and provides some tips on productivity. This a topic I am sure we can all use some help improving.
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If you are like the majority of people, your email inbox is bursting at the seams with all sorts of emails. Some emails are informational, some contain important attachments, some are waiting for a response, while others are just junk. It is easy to waste hours each day wrapped up in email-related activities and responses, thus creating a loss in valuable production time. A tactic to help counteract this loss in productivity is to follow some simple steps towards creating a lean email.  Many businesses implement lean practices into their daily processes and routines in order to eliminate unwanted wastes but neglect to follow through into creating a lean email as well. Since unneeded emails contribute towards several wastes such as waste of time, waste of productivity, and waste of email space, the implementation of lean tactics can really make difference in how you utilize email from this point forward.

Lean Email Tips
Let’s discuss some lean tactics that can be quickly and easily implemented to help streamline your email experience and improve your productivity levels.

1.       Determine if Email is the Best Tool: When communicating with people within the same vicinity, such as people who work in the same department or floor, email should not be used. Instead, it is easier to just call or visit the individual in person. By doing this, you are not wasting time writing the email or clogging up someone else’s inbox, and you are able to receive an immediate response or gain the information needed right then and there. Furthermore, communication is enhanced and errors are minimized since emails may foster misinterpretation.

2.       Each Email Should be Limited to One Topic: Many times people load a single email down with many different thoughts and questions regarding a variety of topics. However, these types of emails are often hard to respond to and can often elicit lengthy responses. Instead, emails should be limited to one topic so the receiver can respond quickly and efficiently. If the sender needs to ask multiple questions regarding different topics, it is better to call the person or visit the individual in person for improved communication.

3.       Keep Emails Short and to the Point: Emails should not exceed two lines in length. It is as simple as that. Don’t write someone a long story that could be conveyed much more easily over the phone. In addition, meetings should not be summarized through an email either, instead other sharing methods such as a staff shared drive or SharePoint software should be used.

4.       Set a Limit on your Email Inbox: Create a goal number of emails that you will allow to be in your email inbox at the end of each day. This number is totally up to you; however, common goals include numbers such as ten emails or only enough emails that can be viewed on one page. In order to meet this goal, you must get rid of unnecessary emails and respond to those emails that require a response.

5.       Use an Out of Office Message: Many email programs offer the use of out of office feature that will automatically inform others when you are out of the office. This will let others know that there may be a delay in your response as you are not available at the time.

6.       Make Folders: If you are a person who values organization, the use of folders can help to keep your inbox more orderly. For example, you could create a folder for emails that require a response from you, and another folder for emails that you are waiting for a response back from. This just helps to keep your inbox clean and it also helps to keep your responses organized as well.

7.       Delete!: Don’t be afraid to use delete. All emails do not need to be saved. If you have an important email or email attachment, just save it out somewhere else on your computer so you can eliminate it from your inbox.

A Clean Email is a Happy Email

The above tips can help you to create a lean email experience for yourself and for others as well. Don’t waste any more time being bogged down by a heavy email inbox, discover the freedom and benefits of a clean and lean inbox.

About Author: Antonio Ferraro - On behalf of Creative Safety Supply based in Portland, OR (www.creativesafetysupply.com). I strive to provide helpful information to create safer and more efficient industrial work environments. My knowledge base focuses primarily on practices such as 5S, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and the Lean mindset. I believe in being proactive and that for positive change to happen, we must be willing to be transparent and actively seek out areas in need of improvement. An organized, safe, and well-planned work space leads to increased productivity, quality products and happier employees.

Lean Quote: True Success Of A Leader Can Not Be Measured Without Considering The Results Of The Succession Plan

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm." — Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906); Playwright

Every leader has two jobs. Your job is to help the team succeed by accomplishing your mission. That's the job that gets the most attention, but your other job is just as important. Your job is to help your team members succeed, too. "Succeed" means doing a good job, developing skills, earning autonomy, growing, and much more.

Developing people means challenging people. But just issuing challenges isn’t enough. You must also teach a systematic, common means of creating solutions and meeting those challenges.

The best way to develop employees is not to manage them. You need to coach them to success. This is a process of developing their skills and providing them specific feedback to meet high standards. Employees want to be on the same team with their bosses.

To get people across an organization to systematically work on improvement every day requires teaching the skills behind the solution. And for that to happen, their leaders and mangers also need to practice and learn those skills. Be their coach and lead the team to success!

Your role as a leader is to develop talent to the highest levels of independent and autonomous thinking and execution. Great leaders don’t subscribe to a “Do-It-For-You” methodology of talent management, rather they lead, mentor, coach and develop team members by getting them to buy-into a “Do-It-Yourself” work ethic. Great leaders view each interaction, question or even conflict as a coaching opportunity. Don’t answer questions or solve problems just because you can, rather teach your employees how to do it for themselves. If you make it a habit of solving problems for people, you simply teach them to come to you for solutions at the first sign of a challenge.

Good leadership is not reflected in the leader’s actions, it is reflected in the impact and effect of those actions on the team. A leader should adapt to the environment and what the team needs today without losing sight of what will be needed tomorrow and always preparing for that moment when he or she will no longer be there. Guaranteeing the growth and sustainability of the team and the individuals that comprise it beyond the leader’s time is the ultimate trait of a great leader. In fact, the true success of a leader can not be measured without considering the results of the succession plan.

 

Book Review: The Lean Practitioner’s Handbook

Any time you are trying to learn something new or you need to jog your memory your will find a reference guide helpful. Mark Eaton, as consultant, author and lean practitioner himself, authored a practical reference guide that will be useful on a day-to-day basis. TheLean Practitioner’s Handbook bridges the gap between the tools and the concepts of Lean and the practical use of the tools.

Eaton discusses key areas, such as: aspects of a Lean Program; scoping a program; value stream mapping; 2P and 3P events; rapid improvement events; managing for daily improvement; engaging the team; spotting problems and communicating progress.

This book covers a wide variety of tools and concepts and explains how to apply them in practice.

List of Chapters

1 Planning for Lean

2 Key Lean concepts

3 Scoping projects

4 Value stream mapping events

5 2P/3P events

6 Rapid improvement events (RIE)

7 Managing for daily improvement (MDI)

8 Leader standard work (LSW)

9 Strategic planning

10 Engaging the team

11 Ensuring success

12 Communications and celebrations

13 Key tools and concepts

The book also includes a wide range of templates and checklists to help you prepare for and deliver Lean events and activities and embed the changes that arrive. These checklists and templates are also available online by registering at www.koganpage.com/Lean.

It is structured from the standpoint of conducting a lean event or project focused on one area. As a result this book is well suited for those in frontline to middle management roles, individuals we would refer to as practitioners.

Each chapter starts with a series of questions Eaton intends on answering for the reader.  The chapters conclude with closing thoughts to summarize the learning of the chapter. There is a useful glossary of terms and index to help you locate specific terms.

Eaton has put his own experience into this book with advice and techniques for leader standard work, ensuring success and communication that I found particularly useful. However, he misses an important concept in Lean centered on “respect for people.”

As a reference guide The Lean Practitioner’s Handbook offers a snapshot summary of key tools and Lean concepts. It a practical, easily accessible resource for anyone in implementing Lean.

Disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of this book for my review.