George Koenigsaecker, Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation
Key Points:
Very few companies have figured out how to achieve a lean transformation.
One of the common failures of leadership in the lean transformation is a lack of understanding of what's really achievable with lean.
We thought a transformation could generate enterprise productivity gains of, say, 40%. But we found firms that had lower unit volume than ours--in similar products--that were running at 400 - 500% of the output per person at benchmark US operations.
a first step for senior leadership is to participate in a Value Stream Analysis (VSA), an effort that usually requires a multiday commitment. When you build a value stream map and analyze the data, you always find that the time when nothing is happening to the product (or, in the case of administrative processes, to the data) is in the high 90% range. Often the value-adding time is less than 1% of the time the material or data/information spends in your organization.
This is often the first time senior leaders realize how much waste is built into the way work is organized today. In addition to productivity gains, typical gains achieved in the 3% of firms with successful lean transformations noted in the survey above would include:
A reduction in lead times of 95%,
A reduction in accident rates of 95%,
A reduction in customer complaint/reject rates of 95%, and
A reduction in floor space of 80+%.
As a senior leader, you need to get some "learning," or you won't have the minimal knowledge necessary to manage the lean transformation. In addition, something that is transformational by definition involves a lot of change management. You cannot delegate change management to someone who has not been there before, is lower in the hierarchy, and has less of the clout needed to manage the politics of change. Given the magnitude of change, the team wants to know that the leader is also going there.
Finally, you must address resistance. There are always late adopters who will resist anything new. They cannot be left alone. If you leave them alone, they will become a cancer and, like any cancer, they will metastasize throughout the organization unless they are eradicated. Dealing with them can be tough stuff, and if the process of addressing resistance is not understood and led from the top, it won't get done. ..
LONG ARTICLE, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
