18


Management Services Spring 2012


contributes to – and comes to embody – the very waste you are trying to eliminate.


But if an employee is resisting lean because he thinks he is going to lose his job, this is your fault. It’s a shortsighted management group that implements lean just so it can reduce its workforce.


The people plan You must understand that you’re making an investment. The point isn’t to demotivate your workforce by laying people off. The idea is to swiftly turn on the sales tap and take advantage of your new leanness. And if somebody becomes extraneous in one area, you move them to another place where they can make a positive impact. You need to reward your people for making a contribution to the success of the company. In the euphoria of lean transitions, people feel part of a new world, but they can become unrealistic. Ultimately, they’re still doing their jobs. I tell them: if you were an assembler before lean, you’re very likely still going to be an assembler. You won’t have as many headaches, you’ll know how to fi x a quality issue and have a positive effect on production, but you’ve still got the screw gun in your hand – because that job was always important.


Sustaining gains and


continuously improving in lean manufacturing is something that Tempress has done extremely well. It has kept its people keen on lean even after four years and continues to set and achieve lean goals for its employees, encouraging them to participate in the success. So we have established that lean manufacturing can only help you over the long-term if you have committed to making it a company-wide standard operating policy. If, instead, you make a raft of positive changes


during your lean transition and then try to ‘stay the course’, I guarantee that employees will slip back into what’s comfortable and easy, rather than what’s effi cient and lean. The bottom line? A company that commits to a proactive, continuous lean effort has a far better chance of succeeding. One major foundation pole of lean is the sustained support that its initiatives must receive from management. Executive management supports initiatives by showing support for the people running them. When there is no support, workers lose enthusiasm; there is nothing driving them to improve. Any momentum that was originally created will fi zzle out.


Frontline people Management’s responsibilities do not end there. Since lean is fuelled in large part by the people on the plant fl oor, management must ensure it provides an outlet for employees, so they can make suggestions when they note problems in their workspaces. Such problems include faulty or unnecessary processes, missing tools, even the improper placement of certain pieces of machinery. Remember, your shop fl oor workers are your front line people and, as a result, they are the most likely to be both frustrated by waste and able to quickly benefi t from lean improvements.


But how do you empower employees to make their own lean-related suggestions? How do you take these suggestions and put them into practice? One of the best ways is through Kaizen (continuous improvement) events or blitzes. A client of mine is a bit of a Kaizen specialist. The company, Winnipeg’s Melet Plastics, a manufacturer of plastic components used to make parts for automobiles, medical


devices, agricultural equipment and furniture, performs three or four Kaizen blitzes a year. The ones I’ve led have


typically been three-day events. We start by getting a given department together and doing some basic training, getting everybody familiar with the latest lean concepts. Then I’ll put them to work.


Trial runs


I’ll assign people to do mapping and measurement in their areas, get them to time certain procedures and we’ll evaluate the effectiveness processes as they were. At this point, employees discuss their own ideas for improvement. They might even mock up


Sustaining lean


modifi ed layouts to their work cell or area.


In the latter part of the event, we will do trial runs, using some of the new techniques they’ve developed. We usually unearth a few issues that we can’t change immediately, but these are done over the following weeks. Besides eliminating waste, a Kaizen blitz helps to teach employees to think about improving things all the time, not just when, for example, a manager suddenly asks why there has been a slowdown on a specifi c line. To try to instill these same qualities in its people, I trained Melet’s entire staff in January 2011 on many fundamental lean principles,


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48