Here are some facts that i try to explains as i feel about the – why lean manufacturing fails in enterprises, and what are the common reasons!
Be suspicious of consultants who want to teach lean classes. Create Ohno or Ford… They risked their skin and their future. They thought and acted, at the expense of their vacations and their savings.
But there are others who live from the story.
A consultant is an involve party. He cannot be even-handed, his business is to sell lean.
Womack and Jones are given the benefit of the doubt. They make a living from lean management, but they have spent a lot of time working without charging directly from the companies from which they obtained information, now the books give them enough. But be suspicious of anyone who presents himself as a Dr. Industrial Engineer and who is also a consultant or Professor. It lives on the lean. This one sell lean. This, the day it finds a limitation or an evolution of the lean, it will keep it in a box. Or in four boxes.
Since I don’t make a living from Lean, I’m going to give you my opinion on why some Lean Manufacturing Fails during implementation phase or don’t achieve meaningful goals.
A guarantee of success of Lean is the startup situation.
Historically, lean works, in the long term, when we start from a crisis situation. In its origin, the germ of lean management was born in a failed Toyota and on the verge of collapse. Unable to compete with Nissan or its other Japanese competitors, necessity was the source of inspiration. He could have failed (as has happened to many of us who have not heard from), but he was right. And he erected a system, the TPS, a practical system of improvement and efficiency, a system that he raised and maintained with the discipline of a samurai, with blind faith and with determination. And it went well.
The problem is the implementations in companies that “are pulling”.
In many cases the adoption of “lean” is a matter of fashion. And here come the failures. When you embrace the lean like the burning nail that is our last option, the thing has all the signs of working. But if there is a return, if there is a pillow of confidence, we do not squeeze the possibilities, we are not able to adequately overcome difficulties and discouragement, we are not able to face the maximum sacrifice. We have no waiting for failures, we do not make impossible.
In war, the most effective and efficient inventions and solutions are generated. That is said. Necessity is a source of success. If we can fail, we have all the numbers to do so.
I said fashion.
Nowadays many companies sign up for “lean” because it is the coolest management strategy. There is a bug in this. All the advances and improvements that lean provides are relativized if they are not necessary.
I would like you to reflect on this:
There are many companies that can afford “waste“, there are many companies that do not have strong competition, there are companies that have a consolidated position. In all these companies, lean has little to do. They will obtain improvements by applying it, it is evident, but they are not vital, necessary, essential improvements …
Probably, in these cases, lean tools will prevent substantial improvements, impede deep innovation, impede revolution, stifle creativity and above all, will not be carried out with sufficient energy and conviction.
As we have already highlighted in other articles, the arsenal of lean tools tends to ensure the survival of the mediocre, generates improvement tools for fools …
This is its safest universe of application, its optimum.
I just wanted to sow this doubt:
Be honest, imagine Einstein’s worktable, what score in 5 S‘s would you have? -infinite? And in Standard Work? Nothing?
Lean has an unquestionable operational value, but it also has a limited universe of application. As for the type of business situation and overtime. If lean were what it claims to be, today there would be 10% of the companies in the world.
Not all advertising is created, today those who believe most in Lean are those who live from it.
The entire article ” Lean Manufacturing Fails ” is base on the my personal belief. It is not criticism, or negative about lean. I believe implementation of any system needs sufficient focus and dedication for success !.