Center for Business, Industry & Labor

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Meeting the Challenge of a Lean Transformation...

Over twenty years ago I attended a program in St. Louis focusing on cutting edge manufacturing processes. Sponsored by one of the Big Four CPA firms, the program featured a Toyota plant manager from Japan. Audience members, mostly representing Midwest manufacturing facilities, eagerly asked questions about various manufacturing processes that had been described during the presentation. After answering about twenty questions, the Japanese Plant Manager stopped and told the audience, "Why haven't any of you inquired about the beliefs upon which the practices I have described are based?" There was absolute silence. He continued, "The fact that you haven't asked this question leads me to believe that you don't really understand what I've been talking about."

We didn't. He continued, telling us that the real force behind Toyota's manufacturing processes was a set of beliefs. They included beliefs about the nature of the relationship between managers and workers; beliefs about whether workers should be encouraged to improve manufacturing processes; and beliefs about how much control workers should have over manufacturing processes. He told us that unless leaders in an organization shared these beliefs, their attempts to implement the practices he had described would fail. A year later, in 1984 at MIT, Jim Womack would label the processes described in the program I had attended, "Lean Manufacturing" and a revolution was in the making.

I didn't really begin to understand what this Lean revolution was about until 1986 when I conducted team building training at the New United Motors Corporation in Fremont, CA, a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors. In this plant I experienced first-hand the impact of Lean. The plant was immaculate. Workers were energized. Management and Labor had a very positive relationship. And the products they made, the Toyota Corolla and Geo Prism, were ranked at the top of the J. D. Powers quality rankings. This experience convinced me that any attempt to transform a work environment needs to address both beliefs and practices if it is going to be successful.

Our Lean Readiness Survey and Rapid Plant Assessment provide an organization with two pieces of data:

1. How closely the beliefs and practices shaping the behavior of employees match those needed to support the successful implementation of Lean work processes.
2. A snapshot of how well an organization's work environment would be hospitable to the introduction and/or sustaining of Lean processes.

Wherever your organization is in its Lean journey, we are confident that you would find these tools valuable. Contact George Friesen at 314.539.5376 to schedule the Lean Readiness Survey and Rapid Plant Assessment for your organization.