The Dangers of Stumbling on Your Lean Journey

As we all try to squeeze more out with less time and resources, the pitfalls of going lean become more and more apparent. In other words, as you pick up speed to get more done, each known and unknown obstacle can be more dangerous …

In his landmark book, Lean Thinking, author James Womack talks about the classic example of rocks in a pond. As you lower the water level (less people, less buffer, less time), you expose previously unknown challenges or rocks.

For example, you might reduce a dedicated material handling person in your operation. Once they are gone, you will probably see the challenges of how you organize, retrieve and distribute materials throughout your shop. When the “extra water” of the material handling person is gone, your production personnel are challenged to do more with less.

The solution? It is not to “tough it out until the economy gets better.” Instead, look at how you can improve your storage and distribution methods. With fresh eyes on the challenges of keeping material flowing, you will get improvement suggestions. Implement them in SMALL phases. This will show results to the floor associates and keep them suggesting more ways to improve.

Obviously, this is one example and does not apply to every business. However, it serves to illustrate the problem-chaos-pain-solution-implementation-modification-cycle that is common to everyone. Be sure you are the one driving the chaos and it is not driving you.

Keep on doing more things and do them better and faster and less expensive than your competition. This is everyone’s new reality … and that won’t change anytime soon.