The approach began with Japanese car manufacturer Toyota and developed over time within that company and others after World War II.
Staff were asked to find ways to improve a particular aspect of the manufacturing process and by a team-led approach found more efficient ways to get the job done that in turn reduced waste in time and materials and led on to other improvements.
Lean management includes a number of tools explained in more detail in the following pages:
- 5S’s – Sort, set, shine, standardise and sustain
- Waste hunt
- Standardised operating procedures
- Visual controls.
But Hamilton-based lean management consultant Alan Sawyer says lean management is much more than the tools alone and it’s vital they’re used in the context of understanding the fundamental beliefs behind lean management.
“Successful lean management is implemented at the bottom and supported at the top so it’s critical that management understands how to lead a change to a lean approach.
“The challenge is people see the tools and grab at those but it starts with a much deeper belief and understanding of how to run an operation.
“Without that understanding the whole thing can break down and everyone reverts to the old way of thinking and doing things.
“People become cynical and re-implementing becomes that much harder,” Alan says.
While the aim is operational excellence the place to start is ensuring a strong, stable foundation in the business.
That comes from having well-trained people and well-maintained equipment using proven, standard methods.
To make those improvements they need to be able to solve problems and get to the root cause of them but they also need to look at systems and materials to ensure they have the right equipment in the right place at the right time and in the right amount to get the job done efficiently and effectively. (See figure one.)
That’s where some of the tools come in. They’re used to help achieve that stable foundation – ensuring people are properly trained, there are processes to make sure equipment is well-maintained and in order, and proven standard methods of operating are developed and people work to those standards, Alan explains.
He says problems arise in many organisations because of what he calls the leadership gap – where leaders and managers in the business are faced with problems but blame the people, or see equipment is broken and just spend money on fixing it rather than getting to the root cause of the problem.
That can happen if there’s a short-term view of how long they’ll be in their role – they want to move on and move up rapidly, if they have a mindset that they don’t want to get left ‘holding the bag” or be seen to be responsible for poor outcomes.
Some people get into the trap of constantly thinking up new initiatives almost as a smokescreen.
“It’s that vicious cycle people get into where they’re just constantly fixing up issues. Key to breaking that cycle is firstly stabilising the operation – having well-trained people, well-maintained equipment and using standards to work to that are audited.”
In training lean leaders Alan teaches them problem-solving skills so they can stop and get to the root cause of problems themselves but also so they can train their staff to do the same thing.
“They need to be able to work out why there’s a gap between what should be happening and what is happening and that’s about asking the right questions in the right way – asking the five why’s rather than the five who’s,” he says.
It takes practice to become proficient at that.
That stops the blame game and turns the process into a valid problem-solving exercise.
It might be that a staff member is at fault but by asking why, further questions are asked of the training process or even the recruitment process and improvements can then be targeted at the root cause of the problem.
Standards
Having standard operating procedures is also key to getting to operational excellence but something that, again, can mean a cultural change for the business if used within the lean approach, Alan says.
“It means you have a standard, you work to the standard but you are also trying to improve the standard.
“Leaders will help the team develop the standard, they’ll coach the standard but they’ll importantly make people accountable to the standard.
“If people aren’t working to the standard then the leader has to ask why – is it that the standard isn’t quite right, have they drifted away from it because they haven’t been held accountable?”
One of the traps can be that people see standardised work documents or operating procedures posted at the point of use on someone else’s farm and think let’s use a template approach, fill that in for us and people will adopt it, Alan says.
But what they find is even if people adopt it initially, they quickly return to what they did before.
“That’s why it is a cultural shift. It has to be done in the context of the wider lean approach. People need to be coached and held accountable.”
Being held to account can mean team members ticking a box to show they’re followed the process but that too has to be audited on a regular basis.
Within the lean approach systems are also put in place to encourage the team to think about how processes can be improved, and how problems that come up can be solved.
That’s the very important continuous improvement cycle that comes from the team.
They’re the people using the processes, the people dealing with the problems and the people who can come up with solutions and innovations if coached well.
Leaders as coaches
That’s where leaders in farm business are coaches in the lean approach and as good leaders take people with them.
They need to be heading in the right direction for that to be successful so leaders have to be aligned to the company’s values and be seen to be living them not just paying lip service to them.
They respectfully provide the challenge but also help the team solve the problem so the system is strengthened.
They should be developing people and in that way helping them continuously improve.
Lean leaders are responsible for:
1. Delivering business results;
2. Developing people;
3. Role modelling behaviours.
The secret is points two and three are the means of achieving point one.
Critical success factors:
- Develop a lean culture by coaching leaders
- Use lean management tools but understand why and where they fit into the lean management system and how they help support the culture.
- Standardise work practices and hold people accountable
- Teach the team to problem-solve rather than stepping in to do a quick fix
- Plan-do-check rather than plan-do-plan-do
- Stick with it.
