Lean Methodology

There is not one agreed upon definition of lean. In the eyes of different education and consulting groups, it can be different things. A problem is the lack of a Lean Standard, as there is with quality (ISO Standard). It’s made up of many subsections, like the Total Productive Maintenance, Quick Change, Containerization, Pull System, Error Proofing, 5S, many more elements. It can be quite overwhelming to an organization that’s first looking at it and trying to figure out how to implement it in their company.

What it boils down to is the process. It’s about taking your traditional operation and trying to streamline the environment: that’s the factory floor and the office, the whole company.

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Because there is no Lean Standard in the world, it’s up to each company that’s training and educating people on lean to interpret the Toyota Production System on their own. Hence, some of them get it right and some of them don’t. There are many approaches, but it encompasses the journey from traditional methodology to lean production, while looking at the entire enterprise holistically. We did this when we started in 1986, while most have only started looking beyond the factory in the last ten years, since around 2007. Most consulting groups, when they come in to try and help a firm with improvements, they look at the organization how it’s structured (Vertically) not how the processes run from end to end (Horizontally). We started doing this since the 80’s and its just one of the elements that we consider.

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Well, it boils down to probably 4 or 5 different elements. One is trying to determine what value is in your process. The activities of workers as they are operating in the office or in the factory can be either categorized as: essential activities, or non-essential that shouldn’t be there. Today, they call this value-added and non-value-added. The value is one thing that they must look at very hard. Another element is value streaming. What do you need to do? There are some core value streams in your business, what we call the Make Ship loop, and there’s the supply chain loop in the business. Understanding what the high-level value streams are and then breaking the company down into core value streams and sub-value streams helps you start to understand the flow. You can then identify whether it’s good, bad, or where the bottlenecks are, and the whole issue of scheduling. We talk about pull scheduling when we’re talking about lean. Traditional manufacturers tend to push goods through the organization, and we help companies change to pull things through the factory, as opposed to pushing them. So, that’s another important element.

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The idea was taken from martial arts, where this system is very well known. In 1999, a gentleman named Michael Harry, who was part of the development of Six Sigma at Motorola, opened his own business and decided to use a belt system. He had a white belt, yellow belt, green belt, black belt and master black belt. These represented different levels that a student would go through in a company to gain higher levels of learning and capability. Each belt takes you up a notch in terms of your understanding of whatever the subject is. You get a certification every time you move up the ladder.

Some training companies such as ours, use this system of certification. So, the belt is really a level. I believe strongly everybody in a company should be at least at the green belt level. Then, they’re educated, and they’re ready to go on projects and participate in a meaningful way to implement lean. Black belts are usually a small number of employees, but they’re responsible for selecting projects, understanding them, monitoring teams, and leading them. A master black belt is like a mini-trainer from the outside. When we go in, our goal is to transfer our knowledge to a master black belt, who takes over when we leave.

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5S Training is one of the components of Lean. The 5S’s stand for Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. The focus of 5S Training is to organize the workplace in order to make it safer and more productive. You can learn a lot more about 5S by clicking on the link below and listening to a detailed presentation.

A more comprehensive introduction to 5S Training

That’s a good question. In the beginning, when I started the company, it was hard enough to get manufacturers interested because there was the “It won’t work here in America, or in Canada” idea. We’ve learned over the years that the principles of lean, being process oriented, work in any industry, any office, any type of business. We’ve worked in with success in healthcare. We have implemented lean in wineries, improving efficiency throughout the organization. We’ve also worked with great results in the food industry, insurance companies, and many other industries. In Canada, most companies are not as far ahead as in the States, but we’re on the verge of the insurance companies opening up in a big way to the whole lean experience.

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• Health Industry
• Legal System
• Government

Organizations that are applying Lean Thinking to achieve the greatest improvements in speed, efficiency and profitability share a common characteristic: each one fully utilizes the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm of people at all levels. There are several approaches to implementing the Lean elements.

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There can be a number of issues. Starting at the top, senior management needs to do much more that to simply support the program. In our experience, it’s way more than that. To do a successful implementation and transfer of operating methods, we need a senior management that can teach lean. They need to be engaged, and the way they lead is by using some of the new tools that are out there that Toyota uses, like Hoshin Planning. By doing that, and doing it properly, the senior management now has a role to drive what needs to be changed in the business and to pass that down level by level. They must communicate very well with the entire workforce.

The people in each company is your biggest variability and can cause different concerns. Obviously, you want people to participate, but if you don’t have leadership at the top, the people will do whatever they want. I think inherently people want to improve their business, but they’re nervous. If you have a management team and go in a company that has not worked in teams, people are generally going to be afraid to participate in anything new, and think “Well, this is another case where the President got off an airplane, read a book and it’s the project of the month”. You’ve got to get past all of that, and the best way you can is with a good level of education. Personally, I don’t understand how a president of a company can tell the workforce we want to do lean and not give them the tools or the knowledge necessary. Remember, they might have been working there 20 years using the traditional methodology and they don’t know the difference between a streamlined process and what they’re currently doing. So, you may end up digging the same hole deeper and expecting better results without the proper training.

Communication can also be a problem if everything is not set up properly. Lack of project management, not providing the necessary resources, there are many things that can get in the way.

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