Many companies these days can claim that putting lean on any process improvements speeds up the improvement. This means more benefits, more savings, and most importantly better customer satisfaction.
The road however to Lean is not always paved and smooth because it means looking at processes more closely and evaluating them. Despite this challenge, companies continue to explore the concept of Lean or Lean Manufacturing and apply it to their improvement initiatives.
Today, let’s learn from Kevin Maddy, president, RVSI Inspection LLC, and his take Lean Manufacturing. He writes over at Surface Mount Technology (SMT), and his article is aptly titled, Driving Changes with Lean Manufacturing. He emphasizes the need to go Lean and how to start it.
Maddy outlines nine success factors required within the leadership component to achieve a successful transition:
- Address the 5%. Fortunately, 95% of employees are committed to the company. If provided with a plausible explanation of why change is needed, as well as a solid plan and training, most will support it. However, there are the few who do not have the capacity, ability, desire, or need to be supportive. The noise, disruption, and harm to the leadership team’s credibility are not needed. Taking the appropriate steps sends a strong message to everyone that management is committed.
- Invest in employee training. Allocate 40-50 hours per employee for training. Everyone needs to understand what they are being asked to do, why they are being asked this, and what to expect in the near future. Topics vary depending on the specific situation, but may include quality systems, accountability, customer expectations, dynamics of change resiliency, fundamental awareness lean principals, coaching and mentoring leadership, gage training, standard work, or process mapping. The payoff on this investment will be significant. Much of the training can be accomplished on the job during work hours.
- Management must walk the talk. Managers often forget where the money is made – on the floor. Those on the floor know how to do the job efficiently and need management’s support. As the leader, this means getting out of the office and walking around to see what can be done to help make the employees’ jobs easier.
- Accountability and discipline. By nature, people need rules and enforcement. They need to know what is expected from them, and the consequences for not doing what is expected. Rules must be fair and consistently applied. This covers the entire gambit from attendance to how many parts are expected to be produced hourly on a machine. It is management’s responsibility to ensure everyone is trained in the application of a rule and then enforce it. Many facilities have rules but, for some reason, management does not choose to enforce them. They believe enforcement will cause labor unrest, but it actually increase it. Not addressing the enforcement issue causes confusion and results in noise and disruption. Along with accountability and discipline comes sense of urgency. It is the leadership’s responsibility to maintain a sense of urgency in a people-oriented manner. This attitude breeds an organization that continually improves.
