Lean Deployments Should be Lean

We are pleased to bring you this article by Troy Taylor, who was formerly with Toyota in the UK. His article discusses his experience as a lean consultant and his opinion on how to help companies and organizations in their lean journey.

Bottom line: Lean Deployments should add value. But the truth is, many don’t.

Enjoy this article and learn more about Troy Taylor after his article below.

As a Lean practitioner and; at times; Consultant, I have lost count of the number of times I have witnessed the death of Lean across various businesses.

Many people ask why is it so difficult to implement and sustain when fundamentally it is just good business management practices and common sense.

It seems to me that one thing that most of these businesses have in common is the fact that the Lean effort was pushed into the business after an initial Pull from a leading executive.

What then transpires is what James K Franz describes in his and Jeffery Liker’s book The Toyota way to continuous improvement as an inch- deep, mile-wide deployment, or a little bit of everything spread widely across the company without anybody, or very few, truly understanding the system.

So then how do we switch to mile-deep, inch wide

I’m sure there are more ways than one, but we could just use what is right under our noses and what we know so well, Lean.

What would happen if we designed our next deployment around the following Lean principles

1. Understand who is the customer.
2. Understand value add in their eyes.
3. Don’t build to schedule only build what is required.
4. Don’t push; allow the business to pull the system in.
5. Don’t do more until the business requires it. One piece flow.
6. Make sure that what you have done is right first time.

Applying these principles will lead to a much more organic deployment that has the ability change and flex to suit changes in business requirements. It encourages a much deeper understanding and eliminates waste.

About Troy Taylor

Troy is a Lean practitioner with over 14 years experience. His Lean journey began at Toyota in the UK where he worked his way through the ranks until leaving to emigrate to Perth, Western Australia in 2005. Since then Troy has worked with some major Australian businesses applying his Leadership and Lean knowledge, including Solahart, Rio Tinto, Austal ships, Newcrest Mining and Boral. He has also been guest speaker at the Association of Manufacturing Excellence, Western Australian.

He specialises in Lean management, problem analysis and solving and standardisation.

Troy can be contacted at newlife1327@bigpond.com.

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