Lean manufacturing’s role in business development

A lean environment is a marketable asset for metal fabrications and other manufacturers. Not treating it as such could put your company at a big disadvantage. Getty Images

If your company has invested in lean processes, you have a marketable asset. If you’re beginning the lean journey, you should be thinking about how this can be a marketable asset. If your company has no intention of exploring and implementing lean ways of conducting business, others might just leave you in their dust.

It sounds harsh, but there’s a good reason to take it to heart. As companies emerge from the disruption caused by the pandemic, they have an opportunity to change their standing in the marketplace.

The Lean Way

You’ve streamlined work flow, boosted throughput, made what is important clearer, and substantially cleaned and organized workplaces. And you’ve made the operation safer for employees.

Because you’ve simplified information flow, you’ve reduced the need for so much shop floor reporting. As the material flows directly from operation to operation, bypassing the exit ramps of warehouse and work-in-process inventory locations, there is less need for detailed reporting. Less reporting means that the information that’s truly needed is more accurate and requires less reconciliation.

All this challenges the traditional managerial reporting relationships. As the operations get simplified and the employees get tuned in to operating in a lean way, you can push day-to-day decision-making deeper into the organization. Your supervisors and managers spend more time improving the system and less time working in the system. The role of the supervisor and manager changes from overseeing and directing to leading and coaching. At this point you are conducting business in a lean way.

You have relentlessly driven non-value-added work out of your production, office, and administrative processes. As a result, you can focus on optimizing the remaining value-added work. Financial performance improves, freeing up cash to reinvest in the business.

Lean thinking makes your business strategy possible. The strategy includes how you approach customers and prospects, those targeted companies for which you’re putting on your full-court marketing press, along with companies outside your prospecting sphere—those hunting for fabrication capacity yet don’t know you exist.

Customers and prospects value what you value: consistency and predictability. When people at your company commit—be it to a delivery schedule, certain activities in new product development, or anything else—they follow through.

Customers appreciate having few surprises. Even when a surprise arises, such as a product defect, missed delivery date, or billing error, your company quickly jumps on a root cause-based analysis and finds a resolution.

Streamlined and clearly defined processes minimize variation in both the products you ship and the information you communicate to customers. All this builds greater customer confidence, which in turn leads to greater business opportunities, not to mention greater economic security for your workforce and stakeholders. Your lean journey enables this virtuous cycle.

Make Lean Investment a Marketable Asset

As you look at your lean journey through the lens of internal benefits and external marketplace benefits, you’ll discover that it’s a marketable asset, especially if your competitors’ lean investments are lagging or nonexistent. So how can you make your lean investments a marketable asset that will help develop an optimal customer mix and strong financial performance? How can you make your lean investments a driver in your business development strategy?

Imagine your shop floor, with all the elements of your lean journey on display, as a showcase for business development. What would that look like to customers as they walk through your facility? Let’s take that walk and look through the customers’ eyes.

The Shop Tour, Real or Virtual

A tour of a lean shop can be a powerful marketing tool, and it’s an adaptable one too. Visits can be real or virtual. During this time of social distancing, anyone with a smartphone and perhaps some inexpensive video-steadying equipment can become a tour guide.

You greet your customers in the lobby, face-to-face or virtually, and lead them to a neat and orderly conference room. A first impression is made. 5S and visual management are evident. On the wall they see key, easy-to-understand, up-to-date metrics displayed indicating your performance as it relates to quality, deliveries, throughput velocity, and cleanliness. You’ve set the tone for a great plant visit.

You pass through to the office. It might be nearly empty during the pandemic, evidence that you have remote processes in place to keep work flowing. But even during an actual tour with an office full of workers, the place has a library feel—no loud arguments, no rush to correct problems, no competing for a constrained resource like a robotic welder or a machining center. A calmness permeates the space. People seem to have what they need. Moreover, customers on the tour can tell what functions are located where. They can “see” the flow of information.

As the tour continues to the shop, customers see clean floors in every workcell and clearly marked aisles. They see where pedestrians are expected to walk and where material is expected to flow. And they can see from one end of the shop to the other. All this instills a sense of clarity.

Customers stand at the edge of a workcell and observe the welder performing her work. The tools on the shadow board are clearly labeled. If a tool is not in use, it is hung in the appropriate location. It is easy to see where incoming material and the outgoing products are staged on the floor. The welder’s movements are efficient. Every move seems to have a purpose. It is clear what the welder is working on and what she is doing, because standard work instructions are evident in the cell.

A customer chats briefly with the welder and comes away with a sense that she knows what she is doing, understands her impact on upstream and downstream processes, and takes pride in her work.

As you continue through the shop, customers see the flow. Visual management makes it clear where material should move. The kanban squares indicate how much material should be staged where and where the process constraints are. Movements occur at a measured pace, and customers truly feel the rhythm of the shop.

One customer speaks with a production supervisor, who describes how he is using takt time to manage his operation. Instead of fighting the latest fire, he focuses on making sure employees have all the resources they need. The supervisor describes how the employees are involved in the plant’s total productive maintenance (TPM) process and how maintenance technicians provide tender loving care to the equipment.

The supervisor also describes how he spends about a quarter of his time improving processes and coaching production employees. Customers get the message. This is not your typical production supervisor.

Imagine what your customers are thinking during the tour: This plant really has its stuff together. That is a good thing for business development.

Even if you’ve invested heavily in lean and continue to reap its benefits within the walls of your company, you still could be leaving opportunity on the table if you do not treat your lean environment as a marketable asset that helps your company develop new business.

What does the customer want? Consistency, predictability, a sense that the supplier knows what it’s doing, and confidence that problems will be resolved at a root cause level quickly and fairly. Make it easy for customers to say yes!