MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT GOES LEAN. A LEAN PRACTITIONERS PERSPECTIVE

In the corporate world of business, organizations strive to attain growth, business sustainability and optimised profitability by achieving operational excellence. For the last thirty decades or so an ever increasingly popular method of achieving that end is by practicing the Toyota Production System in their organizations known more commonly as LEAN MANAGEMENT. Emanating from the successful transformation of Toyota in Japan, and further fine-tuned by American and other global corporations over the years, LEAN MANAGEMENT has become the ‘gold-standard’ of operational excellence models.

LEAN MANAGEMENT operates through five key principles which are: Customer Value Creation, Waste Elimination, Operational Excellence, People Engagement & Responsible Leadership. In my twenty-five years of practicing Lean all over Asia I have seen various large and well as small companies double, and even triple their profitability and growth using LEAN approaches.

The new Malaysian government under the Leadership of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has shown evidence of a LEAN practice being used in the initial stages of the unity government. Three key areas of application of LEAN THINKING and LEAN MANAGEMENT INCLUDE:

·      Customer Value Creation

·      Waste Reduction

·      People Engagement

Though the country, its government and the people are not business entities, it does not mean that excellence account be achieved at that level using corporate success formulas. It has in fact been used successfully to achieve excellence by governments in the West. The Lean Global Network Channel attempts to define LEAN GOVERNMENT as a systematic method to identify and then implement the most efficient, value-added way to provide government services.

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim showed LEAN THINKING in his decisions as early as the first few days of him being Prime Minister. Notably he cancelled an order for a Mercedes S600 costing more than RM1,000,000 as this adds to the cost of the government without adding any value to the country or the people. He also put aside renovations in his office and urged all new ministers to do likewise. These are non-value-adding spendings.

Corporate LEAN embracers frequently reduce operational costs which do not add any value to the customers. Just to show an example one of the companies practicing LEAN which I went into several years back, cancelled a new manufacturing line setup which cost RM 1,500,000 and decided to focus on improving the Quality of their existing products delivered to customer instead. This led to a return of more than RM5,000,000 in sales within two years.

On 2nd December 2022, the new cabinet appointments were announced. A total of twenty-eight ministers were appointed. This is a whopping reduction of 60% of the workforce compared to a total of seventy ministers in the past. In my experience with hundreds of LEAN companies I have witnessed a reduction in the workforce to one third of their original while attaining a productivity jump of four times at the same time. It is all about managing the work of the people more efficiently without Waste.

The first formal act of Datuk Seri Anwar as Prime Minister was to call for a meeting with heads of government departments on a Sunday to understand, discuss and plan how the cost of living of the people may be reduced. Now this is classic LEAN PEOPLE ENGAGEMENT. In the corporate world LEAN aims to engage people and take care of them first. Respect and wellbeing of People is among the top of the ‘Four P’ principle of LEAN the others being Philosophy, Process and Problem Solving. Happy, healthy, and well taken care of people always contribute to the growth of the whole organization. That is what will happen to the people of the nation.

The list can go on, but the above examples show evidence of LEAN being practiced by our new Prime Minister. While these are early positive signs of a more value-based and productivity-based thinking of our Prime Minister, certain things will have to be done continuously right to see its full fruition. How LEAN MANAGEMENT may approach these things? Here are four pointers from my thought process and experience as a LEAN PRACTITIONER

·      Reducing People at the cabinet must follow suite development of more streamlined government processes as how LEAN METHODS are used in corporations with Standardized Work, Kaizen (continuous Improvement), Lean Process waste Elimination and so forth

·      Cutting cost will have to be strengthened with clear Strategy for growth as how LEAN PRACTITIONERS will do it using LEAN STRATEGY (in Lean it is called Hoshin Kanri)

·      The Human Resource of the nation will have to be developed into a more competent, technologically advanced and educated workforce to support a growing economy. This is usually done in LEAN corporations using LEAN PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT APPROACES (in Lean known as Hotozukuri)

·      Unifying the People must be a bottom-line priority as this will ensure the stability of our country as a nation

Being a LEAN PRACTITIONER, I am extremely excited to see LEAN PRINCIPLES emerging in our Prime Minister’s approaches in his first week in office. I congratulate him and I wish him and the new cabinet all the best in building a nation that is unified, progressive, and growing economically.

J Ramesh Victor. Certified Lean Master

jrvictor@elev8.com.my

#anwaribrahim Rafizi Ramli , #lean #operationalexcellence #economy #leangovernment