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The dark (and sunny) side of lean
Lisa Wichmann
Earlier this month, I was in Calgary attending PMAC's 81st annual conference, as were many of you. It was a great opportunity to get out of the office and chat with purchasers from far and wide. Being photographed atop a real (albeit, stuffed) rodeo bull was...interesting.
Stampede lore aside, the educational sessions were right on the mark this year. The two-part seminar on negotiation strategies was packed to the rafters, and people were even listening in from the hall. So naturally, we'll be covering negotiation skills extensively in our magazine in the months to come.
During one of the lunchtime keynotes, I was startled to hear the speaker's view on lean production. "Do you realize if you do lean, you can't do radical innovation?" asked Steve Melnyk, professor of operations and supply chain management with the Eli Broad School of Business, Michigan State University. "In the past, no matter what the problem was, lean was the answer."
But now, a sea change is afoot. According to Melnyk, the bare-bones staff, equipment and inventory of lean enterprises doesn't leave much room for creativity. There's simply no time for managers to stop, take account of things, and dream and imagine more innovative ideas. Some experts have dubbed the condition "the dark side of lean."
They might have a point. I've been in several lean manufacturing plants where everything had to run like clockwork. Delivery windows for trucks were tight, sometimes only 15 minutes. There was more than one frantic production manager barking into a phone in search of a barely late shipment.
So where does that leave us? If eminent supply chain professors are casting doubt on lean production, is it time to abandon it? That reaction would be too extreme, since there are hundreds of real-life examples of successful lean projects saving millions of dollars and speeding the supply chain.
Perhaps then, we should land somewhere in the middle. Check out the web site of Gemba Research LLP, a consulting firm in Mukilteo, Wash. focused on lean concepts such as kaizen. There's an article titled "Five Practical Ways to Stay on the Sunny Side of Lean."
Rule number one: establish an employee-friendly workplace. "Before cutting out the slack to increase the velocity of your business, make sure that safety, stability, and humane working conditions are there first," the article reads.
Managers venture into the so-called "dark side" of lean when they impose belt-tightening on staff who are already under duress. "The result can be a disaster," according to Gemba.
Lean will work if it's built on respect and trust between an organization's leadership and employees. Above all, lean should never be used as a tool to slash personnel and make the survivors do more with less.
Makes sense to me.
--Lisa Wichmann
Editor
Contact the editor at lisa.wichmann@pb2b.rogers.com
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