Q & A On an Introduction to the Key Concepts of Lean
David LaHote is president of the Lean Enterprise Institute’s (LEI) Lean Education value stream, which runs monthly workshops around North America on a wide variety of lean topics for every experience level. Dave has had over 15 years of experience implementing lean. Before coming to LEI, he was the general manager at Parker Hannifin’s Climate Systems Division. Before that, he was with Eaton Corporation and Aeroquip-Vickers Corporation, where he held a range of senior management positions in business development, operations management, management development, human resources, and sales and marketing. Dave recently drew on his lean implementation experience to answer some common questions about how to get started and why LEI decided to develop a basic workshop, called Key Concepts of Lean, an Introduction to the Toyota Production System, which he teaches. Q. What are the key concepts of lean? A. The key concepts of lean are: 1. Define value from the customer’s viewpoint and identify the value stream for each product. 2. Eliminate unnecessary steps (waste) in every value stream. 3. Make value flow (quickly and effortlessly). 4. As pulled by the customer. 5. In pursuit of perfection. Underlying these key concepts needs to be an understanding of the system that best supports them. Q. Is lean the same thing as the Toyota Production System (TPS)? A. The Toyota Production System is the best model we currently have for how to implement the concepts of lean. Where “lean” is more conceptual, TPS is a real model and example of a philosophy complete with tools for implementation. Q. How do I start implementing the concepts? Where do I start? A. We normally recommend that you pilot the implementation in one department or work area where you believe you’ll have the best chance for success. Trying new things can be hard and many of the concepts of lean and TPS are counter to the way we have done things in the past. Therefore, starting small in an area where people are open to trying something different is a key to success. Q. From what I know about lean so far, I believe it will help our company. But how do I convince senior managers? Should I even begin an implementation without a commitment from senior managers?
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A. In my experience, senior managers are responsible for results and tend to support initiatives that lead to results. Therefore, I would focus on how to get results rather than on “implementing lean.” Understand a gap in your organization’s performance where you believe lean could help (maybe it’s scrap or on-time delivery, or cash flow). Focus a pilot to close that gap. Get results and support should come easy. Q. The Lean Enterprise Institute hasn’t had an introduction-type workshop. Why did you develop one? A. We saw a need for this workshop at several different levels. 1. The most obvious was to provide help for people who are new to lean or have limited experience with lean. Maybe they have read a book or two and maybe even been involved in a couple of kaizens but they want to gain a better understanding of the entire philosophy of lean and how TPS provides a method and structure for that philosophy. 2. Another need we saw was to help provide managers an overview of lean as a business system. To look beyond tool implementation and understand how the tools need to work together as a system. Also, to help them better understand what role they might play in implementing lean. 3. Finally, we saw a need to provide a bigger picture view for the change agent types that are working on implementing lean. The workshop is designed to help them understand lean implementation as a business system change that requires new behaviors as well as new tools. Q. How do you fit all that into a two-day workshop? A. Talk fast! Seriously, it’s hard. Where a workshop like our Value-Stream Mapping workshop will spend a whole day teaching one how to do value-stream mapping, the introductory workshop will spend an hour explaining how the VSM tool fits into the total system. We cover what it is and how and when to use it rather than teaching how to do it. Q. How do you teach all the concepts in a way that can make sense for people of different experience and backgrounds? A. We try to teach by doing. We use a simple simulation where people run a factory. Then, we use that experience to provide a context for teaching how all the tools of TPS work together. We also use short videos that demonstrate tools like kanban in actual use so that we aren’t just talking about the tools in the abstract. Q. With such a broad subject, how do you organize the flow of the workshop? A. We have divided the workshop into three areas of focus that we feel are necessary to really understand TPS -- people, process, and purpose. We start with People and try and present TPS as a people system where we look at the issues of selection, communication, involvement, and what it takes to build a sustaining culture for improvement. We then move on to Process and cover the
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technical tools of TPS and how they fit together to form a system for running a business. Finally, we cover Purpose where we discuss the management behaviors and processes that will help support lean and a continuous improvement culture and connect to the marketplace to provide sustainable competitive advantage. Q. Is the workshop designed for just manufacturing companies or would individuals from service organizations benefit from attending? A. The Toyota Production System is in fact a system designed for a car manufacturing company. That means that most of the examples that are used to explain TPS are manufacturing examples. However, lean as a philosophy and as a business system applies to all types of organizations. We try and explain how the key concepts apply to a wide variety of businesses. If one can put up with the numerous shop floor manufacturing references and think about how the concepts relate to their business, I believe individuals from any organization can gain good insight from the workshop.
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