The need for "Lean lens" to remove waste

The question most Lean critics have is "If lean requires common sense thinking, why do we need Lean believers, Lean Practitioners to implement it?"

Lean concepts and principles are indeed easy to understand, lean tools are easy to apply to real world processes. But most people doing the work on a regular basis are usually not aware of the wasteful activities they are doing. In fact most people working the process are so busy doing the work that they don't have time to think about their way of doing it. They get so comfortable that they just stop thinking about what they are doing and why they are doing it?

Lean Practitioners help these people look at every process step with a lean lens. Using the Go See principle, practitioners walk the process with the people working it and map it on paper. When the people working the process look at the process map with the lean lens, it helps them identify value added and non value added activities in their process. Wasteful activities become obvious and every step of the process is looked at from the lean perspective. The lean lens looks at each activity in the process as value added or non value added. Everything is questioned and ways to improve the process are discussed.

Continuous improvement teams come up with unique ways to remove waste and focus only on value adding activities. Most of the times the teams see the wasteful methods they used all along. Teams often realize that they need to be working smart and not hard!

What motivates continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement programs are popular these days as all businesses are trying to find ways to cut costs by working smarter. Although CI programs are present everywhere they seem to deliver bottom line results only in certain places. Why?

If we analyze this logically you will see that it very simple. CI requires change in way processes work in an enterprise. It requires people working with these processes to change and think differently. Actually, it requires thinking outside the box.

We know that human beings by design are resistant to change. Researchers have proven that humans do not like change. So what would motivate change in a CI program?

Two key motivators for change are:
1. Threat - If people fear the consequences of not changing, then they would be willing to try to change. For example, fear of losing a promotion or job or a raise.
2. Reward - If the proposed change brings tangible rewards then people could accept change.

What strategy does your company use to make CI programs succeed?
Share your ideas at info@sybeq.com