Who should be involved in your lean journey? It is my contention that every phase of the operation should understand lean and be applying it to the day to day operations. But what if that just isn’t feasible? Roll-out limitations could occur due to budget, number of available lean resources, current ramp-up projects, or simply someone believes it’s just not the right time for a segment to begin to implement lean.Right or wrong, we often look to a certain segment of our operation and decide to focus our training and initial implementation here. This decision can be made for any of the following reasons:
They are the strongest team across the operation.
They need it the most (i.e. the weakest team).
They have the most continuous improvement experience.
We need to expand the business capacity, capability, efficiency, or insert your unique need.
Etc., etc.
Often the lean journey has starts, stops, restarts, add a few hiccups, and then an adjustment of direction and press on again. While all this is happening you may not engage the whole company, just the lean leadership team. But if you involved everyone from the beginning these minor course corrections will go unnoticed.
Recently, When a prospective client requested our services in supporting their lean journey we had several discussions around the who, what, when, where, why. A close friend and colleague, Bill, shared this experience with the team:
“Several years ago I was a Plant Manager in a small plant where we were introducing lean concepts/principles. In that case I included Marketing, Customer Service and other office personnel to make them feel more a part of what we were doing.”
Initially not everyone wants to be included in every project happening within the company, but NOBODY wants to be excluded. This is where the implementation team must ensure that everyone has knowledge and understands the who, what, when, where and why of the lean program you are embarking on. You don’t need to get into exhaustive details of lean, the lean tools and the path ahead. Let them know in general terms what this lean stuff is all about and when they see it, they will understand. It is often here you will find your next early adopters, those who get it right away and want to support the implementation of lean across the organization.
If you’re looking to improve your continuous improvement and lean program, contact us today! At MAU, we have in-house expertise and can help you get the right ingredients in place!
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