"Sustaining Lean"
Manufacturing Engineering
May 2007, pp. 117-130
The author of this article has led 11 different corporations on the Lean journey, and he reports that all of them have continued to practice lean process-improvement, even through several generations of leadership change. A key aspect of this has been the development of a learning culture.
Involvement in kaizen events is seen as a key: "It turns out that you drive most Lean results from organized kaizen events that are driven by an enterprise value stream analysis and improvement plan. It also turns out that lean is learned from personal participation in these hands-on improvement events. You realty don't learn much about Lean from books. It's the struggle of applying new tools, new principles, and new practices to a 'chunk' of your existing work."
Some research indicates that significant employee positive attitude changes occur after two weeks of kaizen events, and this change accelerates through eight weeks of kaizen events. At that point, things level off at a high level.
Leaders also need to participate in kaizen events on a regular basis. This is both to develop understanding and practice of Lean, and to demonstrate commitment to others in the organization.
The author proposes a rule of thumb that an organization will be "substantially lean" when it has studied every process from beginning to end, at least five times. Typically, about half the waste in a process is removed each time you study it. After five or so passes through every process, a new culture will be built on the realization that there is no end to improvement. Once this culture is established, sustaining Lean becomes second nature.
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