Lean is a misunderstanding

When John Krafcic stated in the 1980s that "this is Lean Production", this became a historical statement, and when J. P. Womack and D. Jones followed up with their bestsellers in the 1990s, where the term Lean was promoted, this was eventually put as the headline of what Toyota called the Total Production System (TPS) and "The Toyota Way".

Calling TPS Lean Production, or simply Lean, in an organization can in many ways be like looking at the financial statements of an organization and reflecting on their good financial performance. We are impressed and say that such a surplus we will also have, and we begin to focus on this profit. We analyze how our own organization can get just as good results and many ideas can occur. We can increase revenue or reduce costs. We can increase the load on the employees, or we can cheat a little with numbers. We know that criminals can acquire values, and we see that circumventing tax rules and statutory orders can be profitable to break. But we may also see opportunities to achieve good results without compromising laws and regulations, or putting unreasonable strain on the organization?

Is it like that with Lean, as well? Can the idea of a Lean Production tempt you to believe that it is about removing resources, saving costs, starving the organization, forcibly managing processes, operating predatory operations on employees, commanding and controlling, or getting experts to conduct analyses to develop new ways of working and teaching employees to do their job better?

Introducing command and control regimes with detailed target follow-up to control other people to deliver better results can quickly lead to the opposite of what "The Toyota Way 2001" describes.

Lean Production is the result of the way an organization is led, not the driving force in the organization's development.

 

Lean develops much later than you'd think

Lean's overly weak development can lead to such thoughts. We see tremendous resources being spent on becoming Lean. There are built organizations beside the main organization of companies that are solely tasked with making the organization Lean. Interdisciplinary teams are organized, whiteboards are set up throughout the company, and consultants and experts are hired to train the organization. Nevertheless, the development of Lean seems to be proceeding very slowly

“What we see is Classical management with the addition of some Lean tools. In other words, we see no change”. Why Business Leaders Vote «No» for Lean (bobemiliani.com) , July 20, 2018, lastet April 21, 2022.

In some cases, one can get good flow in a small corner of an organization. In a manufacturing company, for example, production lines and process lines can be built to flow (parts of) processes, or one can develop Information and Communication Systems that take over administrative processes in whole, or in part, in administrative organizations. But this does not mean that the organization is Lean.

 

Pull philosophy is a driving force

Looking at different elements of Lean, we can't get around the term Pull. The Pull philosophy is based on the fact that the customer is put at the center and appears to be the driving force of everything we call Lean. It is vacuum or low pressure that makes up the forces that create Pull effect and strong wind.

When Taiichi Ohno wrote his book "Faster, Better, Cheaper" in 1949, he described a supermarket model following an idea from modern supermarkets in the United States. This became a prototype of practical Pull philosophy in Toyota. Customers came to the supermarket and supplied themselves with what they wanted on the shelves, they brought the goods home, after paying them. When items disappeared from the bins, they were replaced with new items from warehouses or from subcontractors. Demand generated demand backwards in the value chain, and when an item was sold, it was replaced with a new one. Advanced forecast models were not used, and large quantities were not purchased for storage. What the customer took from the shelves was just replaced.

Toyota's limited resources after the 2. World War probably helped make this a good way of thinking. Not only because it ensured that customers got what they needed, just in time as it later was called, but also because this resulted in minimal warehouses and costs related to logistics.

The Pull effect is central to The Toyota Way.

In The Toyota Way 2001, Toyota describes two pillars: Respect for People and Continuous Improvement. This is taken care of by focusing on what is in the customer's interest, delivering according to the customer's needs and constantly improving in their deliveries to the customer, through efficient standard processes and innovative improvement processes. The foundation stones under the house described in "The Toyota Way 2001" are Challenge, Improvement, Go to Gemba (go to the source), Respect, and Teamwork.

- Challenge. To move towards a vision, we have ongoing challenges that we must overcome. We see the challenges, and we set ourselves a goal, or a target condition that Mike Rother would call it. The challenge draws us towards our vision in an innovative process, in a fixed pattern we follow. And we respect our suppliers by challenging them.
- Improvement.We improve daily by experimenting with solutions to achieve the Target Condition. We are drawn to the Target Condition, the Challenge, and the Vision.
- Go to Gemba. When we go to the source, we get clarity about what a problem is, and how it can be solved, in interaction and understanding with the employees. They are the ones who know the problem and are the best to see solutions. They are drawn forward by the Pull effect to achieve the Target Condition, with problem solving and process improvement.
- Respect. Problem solving and process improvement in interaction between the involved parts in the organization entails the management's absolute respect for the employees, who in turn see problems and solutions, through their respect for the customer. Any improvement should provide increased value adding and better quality for the customer, and the customer's need is the Pull effect that pulls the development forward.
- Team. Whether we perform standard delivery processes or innovative improvement processes, we work in teams. We respect our colleagues by working with them, listening to them, and paying attention to their opinions in our processes, both in daily work and in our shared focus on opportunities for improvement. The team is drawn to daily efficient deliveries and ongoing improvements in quality, including better service, faster delivery times and lower costs for the customer.

The starting point and driving force of continuous improvement is a vision of an ideal condition, for the benefit of the customer, which all improvement measures draw towards, by effective standard processes and patterns in innovative processes that we have trained on and follow.

 

To introduce Pull would possibly be easier than introducing Lean?

In all the processes we see, whether in community development, productivity projects, daily deliveries, or improvement processes, it is the Pull effect that draws us towards the customer's needs and our vision. The Pull effect that makes the wind blow is low pressure in the atmosphere, in the same way as the customer's needs draws us forward. Lean Production is an effect of our endeavors. It is not Lean Production that is the headline, and that has Pull Philosophy as one of its means.

The customer's needs are defined by the customer being satisfied with high quality of all deliveries in the right quantity, at the right time, in the right place and without technical or emotional weaknesses in the customer's experience.

In a private organization, products or services are provided to satisfy the customer's needs, it is not the supplier or the owner's results that should govern the deliveries.

In community development, the needs of the people must be met, and the politicians are suppliers. It is not the suppliers' fads that should govern the deliveries.

These are often in conflict with traditional management, which many believe in, and which means that it is the supplier who controls development by pushing forward their solutions. The only effect the supplier stands for is their vision of withdrawing money from the market. Suppliers are pushing goods and services to attract economic benefits or achieve their own professional development goals.

If we had called it Pull, perhaps the driving force in a successful organization would have been understood? The word Lean can give us the wrong associations.

 

 

Wind occurs due to Pull effect from an area of low pressure. If the wind had occurred due to high pressure, it would have blown in all directions. The Pull effect is the power in all development.