Starting to roll the wheel of Change

Finally after about a month of introducing the concept using LSS approach for the whole business it was able to get the attention of the top level executives. The recent recession paranoia followed by some of the highest price increases of raw materials served as the burning platform.
Identifying your highest cost center and selecting the projects which aligned to reducing those have greatly proved to show how we can reduce our cost and still maintain the profit margin despite the price increase. This is a good motivator as tell each person how their efforts are contributing to the companies success. The intangible benefit of this is now you have highly motivated people who know exactly what to do thus starting to roll that wheel of change in the right direction.
Now you will think its all that easy you will get everything done, but you have very limited number of managers and so many projects. how to overcome this challenge?
The to this is realizing how you can distribute right type of work to right type of people. Any organisation has lots of challenges to be resolved. If you look at those challenges in more detail, they can be classified as one requiring very high level thinking and are very complex; second requiring mid level thinking and are some where in mid range of complexity, and third are simple challenges which may not necessarily require complex thinking .I think may be they can also be classified as strategic level, tactical level, and operational level.
you will realise that there are very few challenges of the first type, some of the second type and lots of the third type. Thus it is critical to get the wheel rolling in the third kind without causing burden to your managers. A3 Storyboards is a good way to do this, where all the operators take control of all the small projects specific to their cell. Now there multiple projects running simultaneously without significantly burdening the managers, another advantage is now the operators own the change thus there is less resistance. The biggest advantage of this is the synergistic effect sets the wheel of change spinning in top gear.

Lean Six Sigma - The synergistic approach to transformation

"I always get questions like "which project should we do first?" ......"how can we get the benefits from this project quickly?"
my answer to the first one has always been 80/20 rule. the second one has been tricky many times as in the effort to get there quickly we miss many important steps which are necessary to sustain what is achieved by any process improvement."


Recently I came across this while reading a book:
"Its not Lean or Six Sigma , its not Lean then Six Sigma but Lean and Six Sigma" - Lockheed Martin

suddenly I realized why we had not seen any major turnaround despite successes with lean at various processes. we lacked the system to bring the process under statistical control.

More I read about Lean Six Sigma(LSS) I am more convinced that this the way to go. I have been trying to put all the pieces together over the year, like how to best capture the customer needs into your product, develop and launch products in quickest ways, control the production and quality , respond to the design changes in quickest way and above all how to incorporate all this into the corporate strategy , deploy it and execute it. I believe LSS will to bring all this under one platform giving better visibility and understanding of what it will take to make a great organisation.

Being involved and responsible for activities ranging from product development , production control, process improvement and to some degree of business development and strategic planing; you cannot have different goals or plans for different function. It forces you to be organised and understand the need for a unified plan to align all these activities. LSS will give this unified plan along with speed and control for the transformation process.

Now the biggest success factor which need to exist is the Management commitment and complete engagement. This would be a big challenge for small company with no previous experience of even a statistical process control. Thus I believe this can only be successfully communicated in the language that any top level executive understands...... Monetary Benefits!

The Best Tool - Q&A

Few days ago I had question posted on Linkedin asking :

Which is the most effective lean tool you have ever used and why?

One of my reason to ask this question was help me decide which tools would be the best and effective to use in lean transformation. I was searching for something simple yet brings confidence and faith in the Lean concept at the process level.
All the answers I got were really valuable to expand my understanding. Some of the top tools people selected were 5S and VSM

Personally I have used 5S as the first event to get visibility. People can understand it without even telling them that we are using lean concept, which sometimes scare people who don't like change. The sustainability is a challenge if you have not been able to get accept it. Small rewards either monetary or could just a trophy for having best , clean and standardized workstation have helped many to motivate the people. But should not end there proper audit system may help you to some extend , the best way to know you have succeeded is when the people start believing in system , start using this tool without being initiated by the management.

VSM is another important and yet simple tool, and could be used at more strategic level too. It gives you a bigger picture of how many processes are related to each other to add Value. It is good tool to plan the future state. Due it its versatility its used in different applications Like Scott E. Davis and his team used to to reduce time for change order processing.

Juan Carlos Sol & Michael Della Fortuna both agree that People play important part in this whole process rather than the tools. Tools on most occasions are not used as exactly described in the book but will be combined with others, adapted to suit the situation using common sense.

The biggest thing we learn every time we go through this process, and that most people who answered agreed, is that if we do not have the commitment of the top level management for the lean transformation it is not possible to get any significant results.
I will consider all these inputs from all the people in my plan to develop lean transformation Road map and would like to thank all the people who answered and offered valuable advice.

The Road to Lean - Leading the Way

The Making of Lean Leader
The lean transformation has been tried by many, and many have failed to archive the miraculous results which were initially expected.
why you would ask?
The reasons are many, but one prime reason is the culture of the people in that organization. If your culture is not ready for change, it will not!
If you refer to the Shingo Model , it too describes something called the " Cultural enablers" as the foundation of any lean transformation.

Cultural transformation needs visionary leader who is very well acquainted with the dynamics of the organization and good at the art of persuasion. As described by Richard Shell, persuasion is "Part emotional intelligence, part politics, part rhetoric and part psychology" .What he refers to as "The Art of WOO". WOO - winning others over

The most important quality of the lean leader is perseverance, there will be lot of failures in the beginning but the positive approach by a good leader will keep things moving. People should be allowed to take risk and be comfortable with failing. This is very essential if you want that everyone take responsibility for their processes and results. Not only does this free the leader to do more strategic thinking but the synergistic effect of everyone trying to solve problems at all the levels in the organization tremendously boost the transformation process.
Leaders don't cultivate bee workers they promote people who are entrepreneur in their respective function. This makes innovation as part of the culture.

Jack Welch describes this as two traits of the leader - "positive Energy and ability to energize others" which according to him are inbuilt in a person. He also describes other two traits "edge and ability to execute" which are developed by experience.

Leader should respect others and be open to ideas from people at different levels and functions. A good leader shares his knowledge with others and expect the same from others. They believe best way to learn is to teach someone , and then let that person apply the same technique in his unique way. Thus by teaching several people and sharing their experiences the whole team learns at much faster pace and more innovative applications are discovered.

Lean Leader also has the traits of the "Effective Executive" as explained by great late Peter F. Drucker

Having a good leader is not only a requirement of lean transformation , but is a necessary for growth and sustainment of any organization.