A Common Big Mistake When Applying Lean Assessment Tool

A Common Big Mistake When Applying Lean Assessment Tool

One common mistake that frequently happens to companies that apply Lean Assessment Tools is that the management team would work out an improvement plan based on the assessment result. Such plan would seek to build the bucket’s short plates, taking priority from the shortest ones to the less short ones. This is a big mistake.

A quick way to elaborate that is--- it takes prerequisites to implement many lean tool. For example, you can never apply Kanban pull before putting in place a steady production process in up & downstreams. And you must have stable quality rate (both good and stable). Without those two factors, setting up pull system will simply create a disaster for everyone from your customer to your worker, and very soon everything will have to go back to the old system.

I knew some companies even multinational ones have been making such serious mistake in its supply base, for many many years. And I wondered – did anyone raise up? Or were they listened to when raising up?

I did know--- they have been making this mistake repeatedly year after year until the whole lean program faded out and the entire lean team been dismissed.