GDC-TBS Company Newsletter...

Growing with Lean

Over the last decade many companies have tinkered with lean-manufacturing concepts, but few have enthusiastically embraced all of the elements required to unleash the potential of a truly lean management system.  However, several new clients working with GDC intend to stake their future on the potentials of Lean:

That potential includes productivity gains approaching 200%, says Curtis Walker, who has spent more than two decades studying and emulating the fabled Toyota Production System -- the prototype for 21st-century Lean Conversion. Benchmarking studies of Japanese firms have shown that conversions from batch or scheduled production to true lean continuous-flow pull systems can produce fourfold productivity gains, notes Curtis, president of Michigan-based GDC Total Business Solutions LLC. The partnership, formed in late 1999, is banking on the prospect that it can create similar results in  service and manufacturing operations across the U.S.  
 
Lean Tools
 
When Curtis talks about "true" conversions, he means a commitment beyond conducting a few plant-floor experiments. Both hourly and salaried employees have to adopt flow techniques and adapt to new organizational structures. And they have to become skilled in applying a comprehensive set of lean tools, including standard work analysis, 5S methods, pull systems, cellular layouts, and one-piece flow.  
 
"Often, people who attempt a lean conversion start with one of the tools, or a couple of the tools, and they push them throughout the organization. Then they wonder why things aren't flowing in the total value stream," Curtis says. "The problem is that there are about a dozen key tools in lean manufacturing and you have to move them all ahead somewhat simultaneously."  
 
Many firms falter, he points out, because it can take as long as three years of involvement with lean concepts, including participation in kaizen events, to fully grasp and believe in the tools. "It is a long learning curve," he says. "And that is one of the reasons why there haven't been more lean conversions in this country."  
 
As a rule of thumb, he says, it requires participation in about a dozen week-long kaizen events over the course of a year just to reach the point where "you don't cause more harm than good" in leading improvement teams. Moreover, it takes about 18 such events, or one and a half years, to become competent in applying such tools as setup reduction, standard work, or cell building, and about three years to instill a firm belief in all the tools.  
 
"One of the complications is that, the higher up you get in management, particularly above the plant-manager level, it is very hard to get [executives] committed to week-long experiences," Curtis notes. "There aren't any boards of directors where the board members have had five years of experience with kaizen events."  
 
And that's the Catch 22, he says. "Because it involves such a long learning curve, lean conversion has to be led from the top. But how do you get anybody at the top who has gone up the learning curve far enough to be able to lead it?"  
 
The answer for Lean Investments is to install or train such people at the top of the organization. Without the full support of the corporate leadership, the lean conversion process tends to unravel at the point where existing organizational structures are challenged.  
 
"To get the full productivity benefit of a lean conversion," Curtis asserts, "you have to change your whole salaried operation, almost all of which is set up in a batch mode, to a flow mode. The implications of that are that all of your managers are going to have different jobs. And that's a huge change. In the course of a true lean conversion, many jobs will either disappear or be totally restructured into something else.  
 
"You end up with a value-stream-based organization -- a collection of self-contained mini-businesses -- that replaces hierarchical functional organizations. You have to change every process, both salaried and hourly; perhaps a couple of times before you really create a lean organization. All the perquisites of power are changed." Curtis speaks from experience. As a manufacturing executive at Daikin Clutch (Japanese manufacture) in the 1980s, he was able to train under the Toyota Production Systems at the Tsutsumi, Motomachi and Takaoka assembly plants.  In the 1990s he directed lean conversion initiatives in 18 manufacturing plants operated by C.R. Bard (medical equipment manufacturer) , Pilot Automotive (OEM automotive parts), and Ralston Foods.  For the last five years he has been consulting with companies in various industries including: Government, Medical, OEM, and Service sector.