Lean but not Smart

If you have ever worked in a big company, you probably already know how things work when senior managers introduce their pet programs. It doesn’t seem to matter if things really improve or not, there is always a “victory lap” at the end. If the initiative and the company are large enough, mention may be made of the improvement during investor meetings.

Programs to apply “lean” management philosophies seem to be growing in popularity every day. Many companies are reporting huge savings and significant improvements in bottom line performance as a result of those initiatives. In reality, many of those lean programs are like the ones mentioned above. They are successful because the final assessment of success was never in question.

If the objective is truly to improve performance and not just put another feather in someone’s cap, there are a few things that should be considered. While lean is currently very popular and, because of the popularity, very attractive, some of the current initiatives are not really very smart. As a result, the improvements being advertised may be only fantasy.

Effective implementation of lean principles depends on several key elements being in place before attempting to “lean things out”.

• Structured and Disciplined Work Management Process

It may seem obvious, but to improve on the way things are done, you have to know what you are doing. From a high level, knowing what you are doing requires having structured and disciplined work processes in place. That means there needs to be an agreed-upon (usually written) procedure for how work flows. In addition, individuals working within the work process must understand the structured work flow and follow it. If people do things differently from time-to-time or from shift-to-shift or from supervisor-to-supervisor, it is impossible to truly lean things out because the template being used applies to only specific times or places or supervisors.

• Standard Work

The same is true when viewing performance from a much lower level. The work being accomplished within a work process must be done in a consistent or “standardized” manner. As an example, the Routine Maintenance Work Management Process for a plant may describe the overall flow of work from identification to completion. On the other hand, Work Standards for overhauling pumps may describe one of the specific activities (pump maintenance) that are accomplished within the maintenance process. Again, if people are allow to do things in any way they want, it is impossible to truly lean out the work because your lean initiatives address only one template, not the consistent methodology.

• Integrated Information and Knowledge Base

Another interesting aspect of creating a truly effective lean environment involves an issue that is frequently taken for granted but, much like structured work management processes and standard work, has never really been addressed. That issue is the integration of information and knowledge with processes and selected methodology.
In the process of applying Failure Mapping technology to the work management process, one becomes aware that there are several distinct steps in determining the true failure mode. One is diagnostics and the other is troubleshooting. All too often repair processes are built around tearing into a failed system before analyzing and identifying the most likely issues. The reason for this approach is that since we have always done it that way, our information systems are designed to support processes that will continue doing it that way in the future. As in a comprehensive Failure Mapping based system, it is far more efficient to identify the most likely candidates for repair before tearing things apart (as with troubleshooting).
Said another way, to be truly lean, you also have to be smart. To be smart you have to provide the right knowledge at the right time. To provide the right knowledge at the right time, you may need to modify your information gathering systems to collect the kind of information in the proper format to support your future systems not your past.

• Integrity in Overall Optimization

One final point that tends to build on all of the past three points is that it is important not to misstate or overstate results. In an organization that does not have comprehensive work processes, it is possible to optimize small, but highly visible, portions of a work process at the expense of surrounding elements. Inefficiencies can be pushed into adjacent, unmeasured process steps. In this case, the individuals working on implementing lean initiatives can take victory laps when their work is done, but the overall system is left sub-optimized and less efficient in total.

Individuals with more than a few gray hairs probably recall examples from before the introduction of “lean” when purchasing organizations reduced their staffs by cutting expeditors only to make maintenance organizations less effective because foremen had to expedite their own parts. Since maintenance foremen had higher hourly pay than expediters, the organizations ended up paying more for expediting.

This article introduced the following concepts:

1. Lean Programs
2. Structured Work Management Processes
3. Standard Work
4. Integrated Knowledge and Information
5. Sub-Optimization

If readers would like to comment on these or other closely related issues, they are invited to do so.