Finding a balance between lean tools and philosophy

As you travel along your lean journey, you sometimes dive deep into different specific methods and techniques. Other times you elevate your thinking to a strategic level. All of this is fair game as you pursue improvements to the manufacturing business.

Sometimes, though, it’s worth pausing to see how all the pieces of the lean journey fit together. Specifically, let’s investigate whether you have a good balance between the tools of lean and the philosophy of lean.

Tools and Philosophy

Improvement is about the pursuit of clarity, be it the clarity of your work instructions, your prints, your schedules, or any other business process. Improvement efforts also require clearly defined terms.

For purposes of this discussion, the lean tools are the specific ways of analyzing and improving processes: the eight wastes, 5S, setup reduction, and other topics that make up the toolkit for your project teams during formal kaizen events and everyday kaizen performed by the entire workforce.

Guiding you and other company leaders through all of this, lean philosophy focuses on why you pursue lean in the first place. Although this may seem squishy and hard to put your arms around, it is essential to setting a direction that everyone at your company, from the welder to the engineer to the president, can line up behind and fully support. When you understand the lean philosophy, you understand how the changes you all make will serve customers better. Leaders, managers, and hourly employees will line up on the battlefield of business to be the best they can be in whatever job they do—thus delighting your customers with high-quality, on-time, and competitively priced products.

Your lean initiative needs a balance between tools and philosophy. Without it, you will either have confusion, much effort with marginal results, or both. This becomes especially evident as you progress in your lean journey.

If you overemphasize tools and never touch on the philosophy, people working on improvements won’t know why they’re making the effort. Sure, people are working on things that improve some operations, but without any philosophy, the initiative may be short-lived and is likely to backslide. The tools become the end rather than the means to the end, which is the ability of your company and everyone in it to be excellent performers. Such excellent performance keeps your customers satisfied, your employees challenged in an enriching way, and the business profitable.

Out of Balance

One of the worst examples of being tool-centric is when you use only one or two lean tools and believe your organization is lean. Say you start with some 5S and a little visual management in a pilot area. This seems to have worked well, so you do another pilot area. More success! Now you do lots of projects using 5S and visual management—but that’s about it. When it comes to lean, your company is a one-trick pony.

If the focus is solely on promoting the philosophy with little to no action, you will have a confusing mash of background noise. Your employees will see right through the fog of philosophy and recognize that nothing different is happening. It’s all just talk.

Suppose someone with enough influence in the organization goes to a conference or industry meeting and hears about another company doing great lean things. He returns, inspired. Leaders might do some self-study work, bring in a consultant, or maybe send executives to another lean conference. The inspired leadership team returns again and begins to define what the company treats as priorities and what the company will become as a result of being “lean.” Banners fly over the shop floor, words flow, and bold statements are made. But without the logical, coherent application of lean tools, it is still only words.

Being either tools- or philosophy-centric is dangerous and counterproductive. You must balance both to achieve extraordinary results.

What the Correct Balance Looks Like

When you achieve a balance between tools and philosophy, people have a strong sense of direction as they make demonstrable and sustainable improvements by applying the lean tools. That’s it in a nutshell, but let’s dig deeper into what the balance looks like.

The convergence of philosophy and tools helps create a calmness and maturity to your lean journey. Leaders articulate a clear direction and perhaps outline a set of operating principles that define what is important. They conduct themselves in a way that shows evidence of deep respect for people, and the philosophy works its way throughout the organization. From the president to the press brake operator, all employees know their role and how they affect the company’s success.

Improvement activities on the floor and in the office take many forms. Formal kaizen events address specific issues, and everyday kaizen proliferates as all employees uncover ways to improve the work processes within their control. Some projects address broader or more systemic issues. Instead of a chaotic mash of independent improvement projects, the companywide effort is logical, coordinated, and calm.

Don’t get me wrong—you’ll still experience difficult problems and maybe an occasional nose bent out of shape when someone doesn’t get their way. But overall, the improvement efforts will be done with maturity and respect, and with an expectation that good results are generated for the business.

Everyone knows how all these improvement efforts tie into the big picture. This is the intersection of tools and philosophy. Everyone operates in such a way that the tools and the philosophy make each other stronger.

Strike the Balance

If you take improvement seriously, you’ll find the lean journey long and challenging. Along the way you’ll run into hurdles that make you question if beginning the lean journey was the right thing to do. New improvement ideas will come along that will look shinier and more contemporary. You’ll be tempted to switch to this new thing. And then some people just will not adapt or change, but instead will drag their heels until the last breath!

As ominous as that sounds, the prize will go to the companies that stay the course, persevere through the difficult times, and strike the balance between tools and philosophy. The exact point of balance may shift over time. Sometimes you might be a bit more tool-centric or more philosophy-centric. That’s OK, as long as it’s a well-thought-out choice, and that you understand that the balance can shift.

Here is my challenge to you: Take a look at where your company stands on the idea about tools and philosophy. Do you have a balance, or are you off-kilter on one side? Be objective in this self-evaluation. Take corrective actions to find a better balance, and then crank up the intensity of your lean journey to achieve great things for your customers, your company, your employees, and yourself.

Jeff Sipes is principal of Back2Basics LLC, 317-439-7960, www.back2basics-lean.com. If you have improvement ideas you’d like to read about, email him at jwsipes@back2basics-lean.com or Senior Editor Tim Heston at timh@thefabricator.com.