Chapter 17

Ten Best Practices of Lean

In This Chapter

Satisfying customers and delivering value is at the heart of successful Lean practice

Looking at Lean as a journey, not a destination

Keeping things people-focused, simple and visual

This book chronicles the principles, methods, tools, and techniques that comprise Lean. As you embark on your own Lean journey, recognize the following ten best practices. They’ll help you keep your bearings.

But first, a key note: Leadership — not just the unwavering guidance and support from top managers, but also everyone’s everyday personal leadership — is so fundamental to the success of any initiative that it precedes a place on a best-practices list. Leadership is the “zeroth” law of success. Enable it. Encourage it. Reward it.

Feel the Force (of the Customer), Luke

The Lean sensei is calling out to you: feel the force. Do you hear him? Can you feel it? That force is the will of the customer — calling out to you, pulling you, stimulating you, guiding your every action. Your mission is to align all your brainpower, your energy, your resources and your might to answer this call.

Keep the customer at the core; the customer is the center of your universe — the customer’s wants, needs, and definition of value. Feel the customer’s force like the force of gravity. It is constant, undeniable, and unrelenting, but it keeps you grounded.

People First – and Foremost

Customers, organizations, enterprises, suppliers — they’re all about people. They’re led by people, they’re staffed by people, and they serve people.

And so Lean is all about people, too. People come first. They always come first. No matter where you are on your journey, you’ll sustain a Lean practice only because people are engaged and supported.

Your people are motivated and rewarded by success, not tools. People are constantly tempted by the leverage and economies offered by technology and tools. But tools don’t “win”; people do. Remember that tools exist to aid and assist people. Help people change their thinking and behaviors so they use tools subordinately. You need tools, but the people are what make or break a Lean initiative.

Genchi Genbutsu

This poetic expression says it perfectly: Go and see. Or, more bluntly, get up off your butt, get out there in the world, and see it for yourself! E-mails, reports, spreadsheets, conference calls, presentations, hearsay — they cannot and do not tell the whole story. You must see it with your own eyes. And not just your eyes — you must experience it with all of your senses.

The world is subtle and full of nuance. Nothing’s black and white. Often these subtleties are not just important, but are the critical difference. Reports and data only tell one part of the overall picture. There’s nothing like being there to get the whole picture — the actual place, actual products, and actual facts (3Gen; gemba, genbutsu, genjitsu).

Some people may label these efforts as boondoggles — or worse, outright muda. But you’re adding value when your firsthand observations and experience enable faster and more effective processes and procedures.

The Art of Simplicity

It’s the famous cliché: “Keep it simple, stupid” — but simplicity is one of the best practices of Lean. The world is complicated, and complications cause trouble — and waste. A best practice of Lean is to simplify and eliminate, before you automate and integrate. Always ask yourself “Which option is simpler?” Choose the simplest option before moving forward.

Note that kaizen is itself the art of simplicity. To make continuous improvement continuous, you don’t implement complex and convoluted solutions. Ideally you change one thing at a time. Increased complexity increases the risk of failure and lowers reliability. Kaizen is the simpler alternative.

At a Glance

A Lean environment is a high-sensory environment. Design yours to convey critical information with a glimpse of an eye or a turn of an ear. Use simple techniques like andon boards (see Chapter 11) to show where trouble is brewing or has boiled over; have horns honk or bells ring to signal takt time (see Chapter 7), or tool boards to illustrate when something is out of place or missing. Use customer information centers, cross-training boards, and performance trend charts for key metrics to present information about the business in a way that you can respond to nonstandard situations.

A Lean environment should enable everyone — even an outsider — to understand the status and state of affairs. Are you running to standard? Is there an issue? How are you doing? All at a glance.

Step by Step, Inch by Inch

Success is not a big bang. You can have big wins along the way, but no single breakthrough event or project victory will sustain achievements over the long term.

Lean is a journey, not a destination. You live Lean every day, through successes and setbacks alike. Lean is the force of a million little things, all the time. Lean is trying, doing, learning, and trying again — and again.

Lean is the tortoise and The Little Engine That Could. Lean is “small ball” — scoring again and again by hitting singles, bunting, and stealing bases. Lean is the Lexus tagline: The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection.

The (Standard) Way

Standardize your work. Make routines routine. Be consistent. Find and follow a standardized way of working.

Standardized work provides the basis for the most effective operations — and for innovation. When you have standardized work in place, you can count on it, train to it, delegate it, or even outsource it. And then, you can build on it! That’s because you don’t have to reinvent the basics, or suffer performance variances because your work is, well, nonstandard. Standardized work is a building block that enables you to improve, move forward, and accomplish more.

Of course, certain practices are custom by definition — they don’t fit a standard. But even then, you can standardize the parts that can be standardized. It’s fine for the custom parts to be “custom” — make them custom officially. Over time, you can look for ways to standardize even them.

Turn Over a Rock

Turn over any rock, in any part of the organization, and you’ll find opportunity. You might be tempted to confine Lean just to the manufacturing or line areas, but don’t do it!

Most organizations find greater waste when they start flipping over those rocks in places that they’ve ignored or thought that Lean might not really apply — like new product development, customer service, or back-office functions.

You will find opportunities to apply Lean everywhere you turn. Your job is to apply Lean to them, in all areas of the organization.

Follow the Value Stream

Value “flows” toward the customer. Use all your tools of communication, leadership, and visual management to help people see alignment and stay in the flow towards customer value. Design your environments, your tools, your practices, and your habits to keep the value stream flowing and to recognize when it’s not. Support people and processes in centering themselves, using tools like tugboats to nudge them back into place.

Sometimes, you can easily find yourself in an eddy current or a side pool, swirling ’round and ’round, spending energy but going nowhere. All the Lean techniques — for reducing waste, organizing into cells and teams, performing standardized work, and applying quality and control tools — are there to help you align your efforts to the center of the value stream.

The Balanced Diet

The wide array of Lean tools and techniques may look like a smorgasbord, enticing you to pick and choose whatever looks inviting and tastes yummy. You could be tempted to select a few tricky tools (too many sweets!) and neglect other elements (fruits and vegetables). But Lean requires you maintain a balanced diet and complete nutrition. You’re healthy only when you’re whole. Don’t neglect any of the parts.

You must not just follow lofty principles of Lean — you must also use the tools. But you can’t just apply technical tools — you must apply the people tools as well. Short-term projects are effective, but only within the context of the long-term view. Lean applies to the whole body of the organization — and not just your organization, but all of the organizations in the value stream.