M4E #39: Real Lean Manufacturing vs Fake Lean Manufacturing
One of the key points to be considered in Lean manufacturing is that it’s a culture process and mindset guided by people through the application of a set of tools. However a big and common misconception comes from the thought that a company can reach a lean way of doing things just because some nice tools are being used in its processes. This is the biggest error regarding lean manufacturing. Today’s video from LeanVlog treats this topic by presenting us 9 symptoms of fake Lean.
Time for Insights
To avoid these fake lean traps the figure of cultural enablers that encourage lean phylosophy in the teams is quite important. Also, encouragement and example given from managerial positions is essential.
Many tools and methodologies can be used in a Lean environment. We already treated some of them such as kaizen, jidoka or gemba walks. Taking the last one into consideration, imagine that you go on a walk each day in your factory but you don’t encourage your people with the values of continuous improvement or don’t listen to them and try to force your opinion. You’ll be using one of these tools but this is not lean at all.
The case of boards with stale information and complicated metrics is similar to the one where loads and loads of data are monitored in the shop floor but no actionable insights are extracted from them or used to improve the processes. This is a symptom of a fake digital transformation also.