Change for the Better

“Lean is fine in manufacturing, but doesn’t apply in my business/sector…”. I always worry when I hear that. It means that the person saying it doesn’t know enough about Lean, and has already closed the door to a vast amount of opportunity.

Deming did not work with Ford until 1981, by which time the fantastic work he did in Japan was already 30 years in the making. His statistical tools, and leadership approach were not fully recognised by many of his peers in the US, and still to this day, the approach he developed and which arguably became a key element of Lean, is still viewed as a ‘suite of tools to be deployed in a manufacturing environment’. However, those of us that truly understand lean, know much, much more than this.

When I first worked in Dagenham, I remember well that beautiful line of Cincinnati Milacron welding robots that had been invested in to replace people, because ‘that’s why the Japanese can make cars so cheaply’. For many years western manufacturers had visited the Japanese automotive manufacturers and seen snippets of how they operated, and each time they came back with their version as to what the Japanese competition was doing, and tried to replicate it. However, what took a long time to be understood, was the ‘why’ and ‘how’ they were doing what they did, and it’s this same understanding that is still missing today.

The Cincinnati Milacron’s sat idle for well over 50% of the time as they were broken down, or failing to deliver a quality product. What the western visitors hadn’t understood was the reasoning behind the use of robots. They incorrectly assumed that it was to save the cost of labour, which of course, was a great secondary benefit. But the true reason was the repeatability and reproducibility of the weld, and in order to deliver this, there had to be a huge amount of work on the consistency of incoming product (the panels to be welded), and control of the weld parameters, to ensure this outcome. This was a real case of working smarter not harder, and when it was done right, the result was the holy grail of lower cost, higher quality and a reduced risk of harm to people.

The same applies to any sector and any business, from banking, to insurance, through retail and software development. The objective is never to put in place a Kanban, or complete a process map. What is needed is to understand the customer requirements, understand the process, then identify waste, and eliminate it in a robust and sustainable manner…and once you have done it once, having taken the low hanging fruit, go back again, and again and again, until continuous improvement is part of the businesses culture. Often this is very difficult to deliver from inside the organisation, as most are too deep in the weeds to really see the issues and the opportunity (the first step on any lean journey is learning to see).

I often hear people talking about the great organisation that they work in. They are part of a team that is open to, and does change all the time. Unfortunately, all too often, that change itself is, in a large part, waste. Not all change is good, and in lean the Japanese word used for change ‘Kaizen’ does not mean ‘change’ but ‘change for the better’. So, how do we know, before a change, that it will be for the better…the answer is simple – it’s by using Lean thinking that you can test and validate change in a safe way before implementing it, then finding out that there are severe unintended consequences, that can be mitigated before the change is implemented. And it’s these unintended consequences, when we get our fingers burnt, that if not mitigated, puts us off change the next time around. And this then becomes a vicious circle of fear of change, stagnation and eventually failure.

There is no sector in which lean does not apply. Everything on this planet is a process. Even talking to those in creative roles, it’s soon apparent that there is structure and process in what they do. Some of my most rewarding Lean projects have been in non-manufacturing sectors, with Facilities Management, Prisoner Transport and a HR call centre being some of the best.

 So how did I get to be someone that can help others understand and embrace Lean? I guess it’s that same structured and inquisitive mind that made me become an Engineer, along with a passion to make the world a better place. So please, if you hear someone say that Lean does not apply in their business/sector, please feel confident to try and change their way of thinking, because we all need ‘change for the better’. 

If you watch the video, although the flying sparks look really cool, they are actually indicating poor welding as energy is lost from the weld into the creation of the spark.