Since the early 90’s the power of Lean Thinking has been widely recognised, but still some businesses fail to implement it properly. Professor Peter Hines, Director of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School, and Chairman of S A Partners, explains his approach.

When I first started working with Lean approaches a major point of discussion was ‘whether we should go Lean or not’. In these early days the case was clear for Lean in only a few sectors such as the automotive industry. Today I rarely get asked this question and am more likely to be asked ‘what is the best way to go about implementing Lean?’ or more worryingly ‘how should I have gone about implementing it?’. In terms of these latter two questions the answer requires knowledge about what your organisation is trying to achieve, what value you are trying to provide to your customers and how you will seek to motivate and engage your workforce on the journey. However, what I think is important is to avoid a ‘one solution fits all circumstances’ approach which usually fails to gain this deep understanding before ‘hitting the shop floor’.

Sadly, I see this simple solution approach far too often and rarely with much sustainable success. There are two versions of this crude approach. I will illustrate both in terms of the improvement of a single Value Stream. The first is what I call a Pillar approach whereby one or two areas are picked; often it would appear to the employees concerned, at random. Each of these particular areas is then enhanced by way of a rapid improvement or kaizen event over a period such as a week. Here tools are used one after another to produce a series of layers or a Pillar that is narrow in breadth, covering one small area (usually on the shop floor), but deep in terms of using many tools. There are two main problems with this approach used on its own. The first is a lack of joined up process thinking meaning that organisations never get the full benefit of applying tools such as kanban due to the piecemeal nature of the work. The other is that these rapid events are indeed often rapid, that is in their ability to disappear quickly. The second approach I see is the Platform approach that uses one, or a small number of tools and applies them everywhere. Typically tools such as 5S and Visual Management are favourites here. Although this is more systematic and engaging for the workforce, on its own it suffers from taking a very long time to produce results. Consequently managers have often given up long Neither of these approaches is wrong in themselves. However, both clearly have their failings. In some circumstances however, the judicious combination of these two approaches can produce good results with reasonable sustainability. However, neither on their own, nor in combination will you develop a true Lean enterprise. In order to do this I believe it is necessary to adopt a Pathway approach as we do at S A Partners.

Here a mixture of different approaches is selected over a period of time in order to achieve an appropriate combination of strategic direction, leadership, process-based thinking, engagement of people and tools & techniques. The Pathway method is designed to ensure a joined up approach yielding excellent results that are sustained over the longer term. In a recent case, assessment indicated that a particular manufacturing unit had worked on a formal programme of continuous improvement but the process lacked clear cohesion and alignment. The result showed that although some tools had been used to make improvement, in some areas the approach was functionally focused and never really achieved buy-in and alignment with the strategic goals.

The resultant Pathway example indicates a sequence and emphasis of business improvement that chooses to focus initially on strategy deployment, closely followed by people engagement. The programme identifies that Value Stream Management would be the basis for the application of an appropriate set of Lean tools and techniques.