Lean - It's more than a manufacturing approach...
BY SIAN JONES
Lean is another of those words, like agile, that has been thrown into the corporate world a lot over the last few years / decades. But like agile; I believe it has been used in the wrong way or context. It is usually used in times of economic downturn, like now, and commonly in the context of spending less, budgeting or headcount cutting. But that is not what lean is or stands for.
To truly understand what Lean is, let’s go back to where and when it started. Lean is the concept of efficient manufacturing/operations that grew out of the Toyota Production System in the middle of the 20th century. It developed in response to the way American car manufacturers had grown their operations using mass production. The Japanese market was much smaller, and therefore mass production wasn’t going to work for them; so Toyota developed an approach based on the philosophy of defining value from the customer’s viewpoint, and continually improving the way in which value is delivered. This was instead of the infamous Henry Ford approach of: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that they want, so long as it is black”.
If you are interested in this topic, I recommend you read the literature on the web around the Toyota Production System; it is fascinating. But to make this article shorter, I’ll summarise what I feel are the three main principles of Lean:
1. Remove Waste
2. Add Value to your client
3. Improve the flow of work
There is more to it; but I believe these three points encapsulate the essence of Lean. In fact, if you are not doing any of those three things, you should ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing in your daily work. Is what you are doing adding value to your customers? Are you improving the flow of work? Are you removing wasteful work?
Whilst these three principles are obvious when it comes to manufacturing; I believe that they also apply perfectly well to the “knowledge” work that most of us do. Think about it. How can you reduce waste in your daily work or in your organisation? For example, how many approval processes do you or your people need to go through to get something done? How many “packs” have you had to prepare that took forever and never got anywhere? How many meetings do you attend that you feel are a waste of time?
The same applies to adding value to the client. How many reports do you need to fill out that do not add any value whatsoever to the clients of your organisation? Or how many features have your product teams developed that are not used by your customers or have never even been launched to market? And the same also about the improvement of the flow of work; how connected are the different functions in your organisation? How does the information and work flow from Product to Sales to Customer Service, etc…?
Being Lean is not about reducing costs. In fact, when the American car manufacturers became aware of the success of the Japanese Lean methods and started sending people to their manufacturing plants to learn and study what they were doing; most of them missed the point and translated those practices as ways of slashing costs, reducing headcounts and cutting corners, rather than what its initial intention was.
Many methodologies have developed over the years under the Lean umbrella: Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, etc…But like with agile, I believe that the important thing to remember is that Lean is not a set of tools or practices; but instead, a fundamental business philosophy. A way of thinking; and for it to be successful, it must be approached as a system of thinking and behaviour that is shared throughout the organisation; starting from the top. And like agile; it is also based on respect and trust for people in the organisation.
I believe that Lean thinking is no longer limited to the manufacturing industry. It can be modified and applied to several other industries, such as the construction industry, healthcare, software, and many more. Organisations that consistently practice Lean are proven to be more innovative and competitive, which in turn allows them to be more profitable and sustainable.