Business Not As Usual - Roadmap for Process Improvement

Recently I was helping my youngest daughter with a school physics project that explored the properties of light and sight. After reviewing the concepts with her, I made an off-the-cuff comment that when you look at stars, especially ones that are very far away, by the time the light travels over the great distances in outer space and hits your eyes, you are actually seeing the stars in the past. She had a blank look on her face as if to say, “What the heck are you talking about!” She couldn’t grasp the concept that she was looking at something today but not really seeing it as it exists today but how it existed in the past. Despite my efforts I simply couldn’t explain it, so I just left it alone.

As I thought about this concept later it donned on me that many businesses today are in fact doing what happens when light has to travel great distances. That is, management is looking at their businesses today thinking that they are actually seeing them as they exist today, but in reality they are seeing their business as it was in the past. Many businesses intellectually recognize that there is rapid and dramatic changes taking place locally and globally, and that they have not and are not reacting accordingly to address, but they are stuck in doing business as usual, or as it was in the past.

When lean manufacturing techniques are implemented the company becomes more effective in satisfying its customers while reducing and controlling costs. 5S techniques improve workplace organization, manufacturing cells shortens lead times and improve quality, “pull systems” simplify scheduling and forecasting, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) reduces unplanned machine down-time, and quick change over techniques increase machine capacity, flexibility and response time. The benefits are clear and dramatic when a company, management and employees, embrace the improvement process and implement.

So if lean manufacturing techniques will make a company better, what is keeping many Canadian businesses from getting started? Why are they stuck? Why is management not undertaking the change and improvement process? For some companies, too many things seem to get in the way.

The most common argument is that for some reason “our business is different”. The argument here is that lean manufacturing principles won’t apply because we do things differently here. The truth of the matter is that principles of lean manufacturing have been tested and proven over two decades. They have been adapted to logistics, customer service, health care, finance and even construction. The application of the rules may change slightly from one industry to the next, but the underlying principles have stood the test of time in many sectors of the economy. The bottom line here is that following lean manufacturing has brought dramatic improvements to every industry in which they have been applied.

The next most common argument against undertaking the improvement process is the compelling excuse of “it sounds good, but we’re just too busy, and we don’t have the resources to do it”. The fact is that any type of change requires effort, and you can always find reasons for not doing what you know needs to be done. Yet to prosper, or in some cases survive, you have to keep getting better. How can you argue against reducing or eliminating waste? How can anyone seriously claim that organizing a workplace will not lead to enhanced efficiency and speed? With the constant and rapid change taking place, how can we afford to believe we will survive by simply maintaining the status quo?

What does it take to get started and improve processes using lean manufacturing techniques? The most common response is that we need the lean manufacturing techniques, the “tools” to get the job done. This is a misconception. The tools are well defined and proven, they exist but what is more important is what tools you require and when you require them. Your journey to lean manufacturing will not require you to blaze new trails, but instead, you will be walking a path that many have walked before you. That journey, however, will require a paradigm shift with everyone in the organization questioning and challenging established, known truths. There is help out there if you need it for training and implementation of the lean techniques.

At the onset of the improvement process, more important to the actual lean techniques is the implementation plan. The organization needs a road map, a well defined carefully crafted implementation plan. This plan is essential because with the day-to-day business challenges and changing customer requirements it is too easy to get distracted, lose focus and end up hoping things happen instead of managing the things that need to happen.

The lean implementation plan needs the input of all of the key stakeholders in the company so that not only is it comprehensive, but that the improvement process gets early buy-in. It must build a compelling case for the improvement process, detail out desired results, and should be clear and simple enough to serve as a road map for everyone involved. The lean implementation plan is a living document that requires constant review, updates of initiatives and completed actions.

Ultimately, the lean implementation plan is a reminder to the entire organization that the clock is ticking.