The Lean Bug!

Whatever you think of when you see the words “Lean Manufacturing” or “Lean Thinking” you cannot get away from the fact it is a set of business principles, which, when applied, deliver exceptional results.

Over my career, I have seen the impact and benefit that Lean Manufacturing brings to any size of business, from an Engineer (in the 90s) working at an Small SME to a Corporate Exec (2009) implementing Lean Strategies.

I personally got the bug for Lean working for a small company called Linread Northbridge (although part of McKechnie Plc). We were making precision fasteners for several sectors but predominately Aerospace. The MD at the time gave me a book to read on “Kaizen” and I was hooked. From then on I have implemented Lean within every business I have worked in to now helping Manufacturing SMEs with short, high impact Interventions to major Lean Programmes and Strategies.

My first Kaizen event in the 90s was facilitating a SMED event on a Header Machine that took a whole shift to change-over from one product to the next, being trained, coached and mentored by a Japanese Sensei. We got the change-over down to 30 minutes. Through using the correct KPIs and driving root cause analysis I’ve increased production output and capacity in manufacturing cells that businesses have said couldn’t be done. I’ve moved 100+ machining centres within 5 days to create flow and as an Exec have put in place Strategies that realised Savings of +£15m within its first year.

Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

I’ve heard the words “it won’t work here” more times than anything and I can tell you it’s Bu&*s*&t. The smallest improvement can have the biggest impact and everyday day is a day to grow and develop your potential. (Marginal Gains – The doctrine of marginal gains is all about small incremental improvements in any process adding up to a significant improvement when they are all added together.)

The skill is adapting, modifying and re-designing those business principles to ensure you get measurable and sustained business performance, after all in its simplest form all you are doing is looking at a time line from ‘Sales & Marketing through to production, production through to Customer Delivery’ and reducing that time line by removing the Non-Value Added wastes within it. Yes there are loads of tools and techniques that go hand in hand with that, but the biggest one is leveraging the knowledge within your people to drive continuous improvement.
Lean Manufacturing is not merely a set of mutually supporting techniques, it’s a change in the organisation’s culture and thought processes. The benefits to any business (regardless of size) are huge, and are only limited (in my opinion) by your Organisation’s Culture and Leadership Behaviour. Companies that fully commit to Lean dramatically outperform their competitors over time.
So get as close as possible to where the work is being done, lead from the ground up to first find what the real problems are and then face and resolve the underlying challenges.

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