Center for Business, Industry & Labor

              www.cbil.org

On Target • On Demand • On Site

The Human Side of Lean

“No person is independent as long as he has to depend on another person to help him. It is a reciprocal relationship—the boss is the partner of the worker, the worker is partner of the boss.”

- Henry Ford, America’s first lean champion

Did you know that less than 30% of companies that start the implementation of Lean processes actually succeed? This is primarily due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what is at the heart of Lean.  It is not tools like 5S, Value Stream Mapping, or Six Sigma. Instead, the heart of Lean is the set of beliefs about human beings and human behavior. These beliefs stand in marked contrast to many of the beliefs that guide the behavior of today's managers and supervisors. Here are the beliefs that guide a successful Lean transformation - or any workplace initiative, for that matter:

Basic Lean Beliefs

1. The customer’s needs are critical. If you don’t respond to the customer, you lose the customer and the business.

2. Anything can be improved. Continuous improvement ensures continuing success.

3. Quality is everyone’s job. Quality keeps us competitive.

4. Involve the people who know the job best. This helps find the best way to do things, avoids mistakes, saves time, and keeps people committed.

5. People want, need, and deserve respect. Respect enhances discussions and outcomes.

6. Teamwork works. Teamwork means listening to others’ ideas and gaining their support.

7. There is value in differences. Diversity adds value by offering additional perspectives and experiences.

8. Supporting others contributes to success. No one works alone.

9. Trust begins with you. Lack of trust can have a detrimental effect on day to day operations.

10. You are responsible for your own success.

If you’d like to discuss any of these issues now, please call us: Barry Schapiro (314.539.5357) George Friesen (314.539.5376)

5S Your Inbox

In 2007, the average corporate email user received 126 messages a day. Workers are now spending 26% of their day managing email. In contrast, a Wall Street Journal reader's poll found that 79% of responders said that less than half of their emails are valuable. So we’re spending a lot of time reading things that aren’t important. What a waste!

The real solution -- the Lean solution -- is to reduce the volume of email that you're generating and receiving in the first place. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t indiscriminately hit the "reply to all" button or copy too many people on trivial messages. Consider who really needs to see your message.

• When you send an email to a group of people, put the recipients in the BCC field. That prevents them from hitting reply all. (If you want to show who was on the list, put their names in the body of the email.)

• Commit to a daily 10 minute meeting/phone call with your main email correspondents. Cover all non-urgent items that you might otherwise have put in an email. You'll be amazed at how many emails you can preempt.

• Here’s a novel concept: Pick up the phone!

• Avoid reading email throughout the day. A lot of people can not get work done because they read every email as soon as it arrives. Create a recurrent appointment everyday where you can concentrate only on your emails.

• Read your emails only once. When your open an email try to act on that email immediately, either respond to somebody, forward the email, delete the message, save it in specific folder, or archive the email.

• Be sure that you have an automatic "junk mail box" set up. Delete junk email that still gets by the filter without even opening it.

• Create folders under your in-box to sort email once you review or respond to it. Be sure to use a specific subject name so you can find messages easily.

• Set up a regular time to purge email folders of outdated and unnecessary information.

Here’s to keeping your email box lean, clean and mean!