16 Surprising But Powerful Concepts I've Learned About Lean
When I first learned about Lean, I was just getting started in my career, so I didn't have a lot of baggage to overcome. I didn't have any internships in college due to sports, so my first "real" job was my first experience in corporate America.
What I've learned over my years of teaching and practicing Lean is that there are certain topics and concepts that are already known to most people (need to continuously improve, working as a team, using data, need to satisfy customers, etc).
However, there are other concepts that are new, surprising and counterintuitive to people learning these methods for the first time.
Here are the Top 16 topics that I have compiled over the years that seemed to be most eye-opening to those in my classes and the clients I work with:
- One piece flow is preferred over batching - Batching seems more intuitive and efficient to most people, but it actually can take longer, and it slows down the response time to the customer. In the book "Lean Thinking" they go through an example of stuffing envelopes. They discuss how completing one envelope all the way through the 4 process steps goes faster than completing all the envelopes within each of the 4 steps of the process then moving to the next step. You can watch the envelope stuffing video, and learn more about batching versus one piece flow in our article called 8 ways why batching is bad for your business
- Managing and controlling inventory improves flow - It is natural for people to think that shoving more work into the processes will lead to more completed work. However, the opposite occurs. When we allow too many vehicles onto the highway, it creates traffic jams, and all the cars come to a screeching halt. Some highways have stoplights on the on-ramp to limit the amount of cars on the highway to keep the traffic flowing faster. To make your work flow faster, the key is to limit how many jobs and tasks are in-process at any time, using methods like Kanban. This allows us to complete more tasks all the way through, which surprisingly allows us to complete more work.
- Engaging people in small improvements - Often I hear improvement ideas that are massive in scope, and will take months to complete, will cost a lot of money, and with unknown results. Many improvement ideas revolve around something shiny and new, like a new database, new machine, new software program, different organizational structure or new product or service offering. Instead, what if we could use a more effective approach of first improving what we have as much as possible, by engaging and leveraging the power of every employee in the organization to make small, incremental improvements (kaizen) every day? This will add up to significant benefits in a much shorter time (with less cost and resistance). The key is to allow time for each worker to make these improvements, from 15 to 60 minutes per day. That might seem like a lot of time, but it will pay off in the long run. If the problems cannot be addressed by the workers, then a system of tracking these worker ideas and sharing status updates with the them is essential, or the ideas will dry up quickly. To build momentum, make sure you celebrate and share these small successes to inspire others to make improvements in their area.
- Respect for people and humanity - Many people are surprised to learn that respect is used in a business context, when usually there is strong conflict between workers and management. It doesn't have to be that way! Lean reminds us that the workers are the expert at their job, and we need to start by respecting that expertise. We do this by asking for their ideas and inputs, not telling them what to do, or how to improve. Yet this usually happens because management makes more money than they do, so they think that means they should know what to do more than the workers themselves. This also extends into our local communities, where organizations should strive to be a great partner in making the community better, not looking for shortcuts to gain financial advantages, pay low wages and minimal benefits, or limit competition.
- Developing people as problem solvers - Instead of trying to make people work as hard as possible, what will really drive long-term results is developing your people to be good problem solvers. This will give them the skills to make the work safer, higher quality, simpler, better and faster (in that order). To give them these skills, it takes investment in training and individual coaching through deliberate practice. If they're too busy working all the time, they won't have time to problem solve, and you'll see stagnation in your processes. If people aren't being developed, they will also get bored and look to move to another department, or will leave the company. In mature Lean organizations, your ability to get promoted will be limited by your ability to develop your replacement, which is not what typically happens in many companies today. Management looks to take advantage of workers and make the numbers look good in the short term to bring attention to themselves so they can get promoted. They don't waste time on developing people because they know they'll be promoted soon, and won't be around to deal with the long-term consequences.
- Stop the process quickly and often - Andon is the method of signaling when a problem has happened, so it can get attention and can be resolved quickly before it turns into an even bigger problem (think about opening up a new checkout line at a grocery store when the lines are long). Even mature organizations that have designed these types of systems don't use them properly. There is often fear of bringing up problems, so they don't "stop the line" or notify their supervisor, and the process gets worse until it cannot be hidden any longer. Mature Lean organizations strive to stop the line many times during the day, but for only short periods of time, so that these small problems never grow into big problems.
- No blame for problems - One of the reasons why problems don't get brought up is the fear of getting in trouble or being yelled at (or even fired in some cases). An organization with fear is one that will hide problems and blame others for mistakes, which will make it nearly impossible to get to the root cause of why problems occurred in the first place. Instead, organizations must assume everyone is trying their best to do good work, and assume that the process is broken or needs to be changed. These problems are simply "opportunities for improvement." You should be thanking workers for bringing up problems, as it can be difficult to admit fault or mistakes, and it will create a much better culture that will support future process improvements.
- Removing non-value added tasks (waste) is the best way to save time - Improvement ideas often come with large price tags that take months to implement. What I notice is that most of these ideas are trying to automate or streamline the value-added work (what the customer wants). That sounds correct in theory, but where the real opportunity is in removing the 8 types of waste out of the process first, so that you can stop doing the tasks that the customer does not want. This allows you more time to do what the customer really wants, thus leading to noticeable improvements that are often less costly and quicker to implement.
- Measuring customer lead time - Organizations typically look at efficiency by measuring how busy their workers are. But your customer could care less how busy your workers are. They only care how long it takes to get a high quality product or service. Lean starts with the customer and measures how long it takes to complete requests. Efficiency is measured by looking at the cycle time of the processes as a percentage of the customer wait time, called Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE). Having idle workers that can respond quickly to customer requests is much preferred than having everyone busy. Being too busy means workers don't notice the requests when they come in, or those requests get stuck behind less important work, causing delays to the customer.
- Suboptimizing your time instead of improving the system - Reducing the time to complete tasks seems like the right thing to do, but sometimes you can make things worse by not understanding what impact those improvements will have on the bigger process or system. Too often, people cut out important tasks that others are relying on, causing them to spend more time than what was saved. In fact, sometimes the best improvement is to take on more work because it saves more time for everyone else in the process, thus leading to overall time savings for the organization, even though it might add time to your workload. We are trying to reduce overall time, not the time for each individual in the process. Learn more by reading our article: Reducing your time might seem like lean, but you can easily anger your customers.
- Daily huddles to engage workers - Employees that don't get feedback on how their doing are less motivated and engaged. Communication is also a major issue in most organizations, as they often do a poor job of keeping people informed about the business and their individual performance, which leads to rumors, distrust and lack of motivation. Having a short meeting (under 10 minutes) every day to check-in with your team goes a long way to staying connected and on the same page. Topics include yesterday's performance, plan for today, company news, safety/security concerns, improvement ideas and whatever other information they want to know about. Sadly, organizations view those 10 minutes as unproductive work time, and don't understand the value the meeting brings to everyone.
- Balance the work to Takt Time - The best way to improve a process is to design it to match the customer demand. Takt time helps us calculate the correct pace needed for that process, so we can setup the workflow and bring in the correct number of people to fulfill the customer demand as quickly as possible. The best use of resources occurs when everyone has a similar amount of work, which is close to the takt time without going over. One of the best books I've found about advanced Lean improvements is Kaizen Express: Fundamentals for Your Lean Journey
- Confirm flow down of goals through Catchball - Many organizations set annual goals for performance, and some look at those monthly. More mature organizations look at the weekly or daily. But before establishing goals, we need buy-in from everyone that the goals are correct and drive the right behavior. Hoshin Kanri or Catchball is a two-way communication channel between management and the workers. Instead of only sending goals and objectives down to the workers (one-way), it's better to solicit feedback from everyone before they are finalized, and bring that feedback to management to make adjustments. This engages the workers in committing to the goals, since they had input on reviewing or approving them.
- Use kaizen events to accelerate improvements - Too often improvements take way too long (months or years) to gain agreement and complete action items. One of the best methods is to get all the key stakeholders in a room for a few hours or a few days to get as many tasks and actions completed as quickly as possible. This works well because all the decision makers (those that actually do the work) are in the room and dedicated and empowered to resolve a problem. Learn how to plan a lean event >>>
- Leverage freed-up resources, don't lay them off - One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is to improve a process, then get rid of the extra people to save money. This creates fear in your workers that the next improvement will lead to their layoff, so they don't want to help or participate (and who can blame them?). To remove this fear, top leadership should make a commitment that no jobs will be lost due to improvement work. Learn more by reading our article called: What do I do with extra resources as a result of improvement without laying them off?
- Solve problems at the gemba (where the work is done) - Management often feels they know more about the processes than the workers. But too often they spend most of their time in their offices, not directly in the value-added process areas. They try to make process or policy changes without really understanding the root causes or impact of those changes to the process. Instead, whenever a problem arises, management should be empowering and coaching the teams to solve their own problems, and going to the work area often to see the problem first hand, and asking respectful questions of the workers to get a deep understanding of what's really going on. A frequent statement you will hear is "I don't know, let's go and see the problem!"
Recommended by LinkedIn
What do you think?
For those already familiar with Lean, did I leave anything off the list? What concepts get the most questions or excitement in your training and coaching?
If you'd like to learn more about these Lean concepts and principles, sign up for the "Lean Fundamentals" course below. You can even take the first 5 modules (Lean Introduction) for FREE, using coupon code "KICKSTARTLEAN-LSSE"
Process Improvement Project Manager with CIRAS - ISU
2yIt is so refreshing to find articles like this that align so closely with what we are sharing with all in our operations! Thanks for putting this together and sharing!
Director, Operational Excellence - MasTec Clean Energy and Infrastructure
2yThanks for sharing, Brion.
Retired - Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
2yGreat article Briton.
CPHQ, Lean Master, Six Sigma Black Belt, Continuous Improvement Specialist
2yThanks!
Dynamic Transformational Executive with expertise in continuous improvement across diverse global industries, from midsize to Fortune 50 companies.
2yGreat article Brion!