Staying Lean: Thriving Not Just Surviving
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IFC.fm Page 1 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:36 AM Staying Lean: thriving, not just surviving This publication was developed as part of the SUCCESS (SUstainable Channelled Change in Every Scale and Situation) research programme which ran from 2004 to 2008. The programme was part of the Cardiff University Innovative Manufacturing Research Programme (CUIMRC) and has been sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), Assa Abloy, Arvin Meritor, Complete Core Business Solutions, eBECS, Rizla, Royal Mint, Visteon and Welsh Assembly Government. Cardiff University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre is a joint venture programme involving colleagues from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC), Logistics Systems Dynamics Group (LSDG) and Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC). The SUCCESS programme was designed to extend the focus on Lean Thinking away from just ‘How do you get it going?’ to ‘How do you sustain it over the medium to long term?’ Within the research, this subject has been addressed at a range of scales from individuals to teams, factory shop floors, single sites, groups of companies, supply chains and regions. This publication specifically addresses the group of companies scale, a level that has attracted very little academic study. We believe sustaining change is more important for organisations than their first efforts in going Lean or using Lean to increase profits. Hence, this publication extends our earlier works on Going Lean: A Guide to Implementation and Lean Profit Potential. The authors would like to thank a number of past and present people for their hard work and support within the SUCCESS programme and specifically this publication. These include: Nicola Bateman, Jo Beale, Andrew Davies, Andrew Glanfield, Rebecca Harvey, John Lucey and Roberto Sarmiento of Cardiff University IMRC; Ton Augustijn, Chris Brown, Bill Ford, Ron Harper, John Holmwood, C-G Lenasson, Frans Liebreghts, Greg MacDougall, Peter Rose, Marcel Schabos, Todd Sheldan, Per Zettergren and many others at Cogent Power. Thanks also go to Paul Allen, Chris Butterworth, Carmen Crocker, Kevin Eyre, Anthony Griffiths, Dave Lee, Phil Shelley, Kevin Wadge and Leighton Williams of S A Partners. We would also like to thank the past co-authors in this series: David Taylor, Riccardo Silvi and Monica Bartolini as well as Chris Craycraft from Whirlpool. EPSRC Grant GR/375505/01 is gratefully acknowledged. Professor Peter Hines, Dr Pauline Found, Gary Griffiths and Richard Harrison February 2008 Professor Peter Hines is the Director of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) and a Director of the Cardiff University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (CUIMRC). Dr Pauline Found is a Senior Research Fellow at the Cardiff University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (CUIMRC). Gary Griffiths is a Managing Consultant with S A Partners. Richard Harrison is a Managing Consultant with S A Partners. Published by: Lean Enterprise Research Centre Cardiff University Cardiff Business Technology Centre Senghennydd Road Cardiff CF24 4AY © Peter Hines, Pauline Found, Gary Griffiths and Richard Harrison, 2008 First published 2008 A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library. ISBN: 0 902810 11 1 Pages edited and designed by Text Matters www.textmatters.com Cover design by Idealogic www.idealogicuk.com All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers. Lean_Iceberg_25Jan08.fm Page 1 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:37 AM Contents Staying Lean: thriving, not just surviving 3 Lean vision and principles 4 Understanding value and waste 5 Going Lean and staying Lean 7 Company background 13 The road to Lean 13 The journey to Lean 17 Below the waterline 19 Strategy and alignment 19 Leadership 26 Behaviour and engagement 34 Above the waterline 47 Processes 47 Technology, tools and techniques 67 Conclusions 85 Route to Lean 85 Sources of further help 93 Recommended publications 93 Jargonbuster 95 Lean_Iceberg_25Jan08.fm Page 2 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:37 AM Lean_Iceberg_25Jan08.fm Page 3 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:37 AM Staying Lean: thriving, not just surviving Over the last 15 years we have consistently been asked a series of searching questions about the application of Lean Thinking: 1 Where do I start? 2 Is there a road map that I can follow? 3 What does Lean Thinking involve? 4 Who will I have to involve? 5 Is it only applicable to the shop floor? 6 Is it only for manufacturing firms? 7 What will the benefits be? 8 Will it make me more profitable? To answer these questions we have produced two publications, Going Lean and Lean Profit Potential, which give a practical insight into these topics. However, since these publications were produced in the early 2000s the set of questions we are asked has widened, with a series of additional queries: 1 How long is it before the benefits start fading away? 2 Why do people seem to have lost their enthusiasm for Lean here? 3 What is the secret of sustainability? 4 What is the difference between managing and leading a Lean change? 5 How do we ensure continued buy-in from the workforce? We have written this guide to help you answer these questions and ensure that you don’t just start a successful Lean programme in your business but that you sustain and build on your early successes. We have designed the book with plenty of space for you to write notes next to the text, and have included a range of sources of further information and a jargonbuster towards the end. Throughout this guide we use a real case, that of Cogent Power, to illustrate how Lean can be applied in a sustainable way across a group company operating mostly from brownfield sites within a range of product categories, countries and cultures. We hope you enjoy reading the book and wish you a sustainable Lean journey. 3 Lean_Iceberg_25Jan08.fm Page 4 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:37 AM Lean vision and principles The characteristics of the Lean organisation and the Lean supply chain are described in Lean Thinking – Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by Jim Womack and Dan Jones. This book provides a vision of a world transformed from mass production to a Lean enterprise. The authors highlight the huge amounts of waste that occur in most organisations and show that a systematic attack on waste, both within companies and along the supply chains, can have tremendous benefits to the short-run profitability and long-term prospects of companies and organisations. Lean production methods were pioneered by Toyota in Japan. Lean Thinking distils the essence of the Lean approach into five key principles and shows how the concepts can be extended beyond automotive production to any company or organisation, in any sector, in any country. The five Lean principles 1 Specify value from the perspective of the customer 5 Strive for 2 Identify the perfection value stream 4 At the pull 3 Make the of the customer value creating steps flow 1 Specify what does and does not create value from the customer’s perspective and not from the perspectives of individual firms, functions and departments. 2 Identify all the steps necessary to design, order and produce the product across the whole value stream to highlight non-value-adding waste. 3 Make those actions that create value flow without interruption, detours, backflows, waiting or scrap. 4 Only make what is pulled by the customer. 5 Strive for perfection by continually removing successive layers of waste as they are uncovered. These principles are fundamental to the elimination of waste. They are easy to remember (although not always easy to achieve!) and should be the guide for everyone in the organisation who becomes involved in the Lean transformation. If you are serious about implementing a sustainable Lean system, then the people in your organisation need to read Lean Thinking at the outset. If they haven’t got enough time to do that, they probably won’t implement Lean and certainly won’t sustain it! 4 Staying Lean: thriving, not just surviving ■ Lean vision and principles Lean_Iceberg_25Jan08.fm Page 5 Friday, January 25, 2008 10:37 AM Understanding value and waste In order to go Lean and stay Lean, you continually need to understand customers and what they value. To get your organisation focused on these needs you must define the value streams or processes inside your company and, later, the value streams or processes in your wider supply chain as well. To satisfy customers you will need to eliminate or at least reduce the wasteful activities that your customers would not wish to pay for. Next you have to find ways of: Readers beware! ■ setting the direction Many organisations fail to recognise the importance of ■ fixing targets ! mura and muri. Pay ■ seeing whether or not change is actually occurring. attention to all three: muda, mura and muri if you want You need a framework to deliver value for your customers, as well as a toolkit to to succeed in, and sustain, your Lean implementation. make the change. The steps required to go Lean are described in Going Lean and Lean Profit Potential. Lean focuses on creating value for the customer. This means eliminating, or at least reducing, everything else. In order to do this, Lean leader Toyota identified three key areas to address: muda, mura and muri. Organisations that implement, but often fail to sustain Lean systems, usually only concentrate on muda.