Is Lean Smart?

Do not be a lean imposter. Adopt the right techniques that ensure improved profitability and customer satisfaction, and foster employee engagement.

- Lonnie Wilson

Lean manufacturing was coined by Jim Krafcik as documented in the landmark book, The Machine that Changed the World. That machine was the Toyota Production System (TPS) and lean manufacturing was the generic term used to describe it. However, from the time it was coined, to today and continuing onward, it has increasingly devolved from its intended model, the TPS. And many lean initiatives are failing because they have strayed from this sound and proven model.

Why change a winning hand?

Literature is filled with thousands of articles addressing this question but the answer is not very complicated. The TPS is a hard model to duplicate. Not intellectually hard, and that is some of its inherent danger; on paper it looks rather simple. But it takes a very large dose of four qualities that are in increasingly shorter supply. They are: hard work, discipline, introspection, and a long-term perspective. I find a few firms that are really willing to commit to these four qualities. Rather than take on these four challenges, like a river flowing to the gulf, they take the path of least resistance. Even so, as long as they utilise some of the basic lean tools— with a less than fully committed approach—they can get some rather impressive, but decidedly short-term, gains. Using this partial approach, the real benefits of sustained long-term gains elude them. Many practitioners have given a name to these partial efforts. One colleague of mine called it fake lean, yet another called it mean lean but our term is pseudo-lean.

How has lean morphed

The lean we teach at our firm, Quality Consultants, is TPS-lean, based totally on the Toyota Production System aimed at creating a culture of continuous improvement and respect for people.