LEAN

Leadership. Eliminate waste. Act now. Never ending.

LEAN Method searches optimizing management and productive processes. In this way we use less resources, making each process more efficient. Its key point is reducing investment, time and effort. Client is the most important key in the value chain.

• A good leader ensures the proper evolution of the application and the team
• Everything is transitory and can and must change if anybody finds a better way to work
• Mutation speed is a parameter that clearly indicates the capacity to evolve, change internal culture and transform the way to work
• Those who lead the change must present conviction and compromise in the future
• Changes must be implemented once the problem has been analyzed and detected, you can't apply changes because they work in another place. LEAN tools must be used to detect inefficiencies
• Differentiation is the most important part in the business world

Key objective

The key objectives of this methodology are:

• Reduce what is considered waste (MUDA, waste in Japanese)
• Identify those overloads that slow down working times
• Reduce costs
• Team work

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Five factors

The five factors that determinate LEAN management are:

1. Purpose and value (Hoshin, a compass)

The definition of the purpose and value for the company and the individual, having the responsibility of their own work and initiate actions that provide value to the client. All collaborators must have all the information for taking decisions and communication systems to provide suggestions.

Hoshin method consists on the analysis in depth from the company objectives to individual contributors responsibilities.

True North Metrics reflect the purpose of the company regarding:

• people: people development is a key aspect in every company
• quality: an external lecture of quality permits measure the client satisfaction level
• timing: we need to have a fast delivery time
• costs: financial results is a consequence of the activities and improvements made on the operative areas. Summarizing, an improvement in personal area through a process of standardization reflects on quality. This quality improves creation times, therefore reduce costs.

2. Processes and chain value

Which processes and chain value are needed to provide value to the customer to reach company purpose and provide value constantly at all levels. If any process does not add value is considered wasteful. We have to:

• identify processes
• identify flows
• identify problems and inefficiencies

Japanese relation:

• muda is that activity that doesn't add value
• muri is the overload of work
• mura is the variability of the results of the processes (muda and muri) both in quality and timing

Not only working faster processes will be faster. We have to understand some concepts:

• productivity: resources created / number employees
• efficiency: resources created / maximum production capacity
• effectiveness: resources required / resources created

3. people with a dynamic flow

People have formation, information and autonomy for improving continuously the processes that help reaching company objective.
They way we communicate is a reflex of the way we relate with each other.

• organize people. 50% of the personal is focused on the base, while decisions are taken by a small group who has no contact with processes that generate value. On lean culture, leaders have to lister, mentor, inform and help their collaborators to grow.
• create autonomous groups by functions they perform, being able to have all the required tools to make the process work.
• assign leader for each group. He must be able of plan, explain and follow the process objectives while keeping a direct dialog with with his team, requesting their opinion on how would be the best way to perform a certain task.

4. performance, problem solving and evolution

We need to understand the difference between a problem and a improvement opportunity: a problem is a deviation from the standard that produces a negative impact on results. An opportunity is the possibility of optimizing a process and, as a result, define a new standard. Many times small problems are not considered important until it's too late and they have an impact in another process. problems appear when processes are not solid enough and break company purpose. For solving that problems, we need to define how to treat each of them depending on their complexity and importance:

• non repetitive and limited scope: individual solution by the person that has detected it without any thorough analysis, just do it.
• repetitive and limited scope: must be treated by all the group and has a custom action plan.
• repetitive and complex: affect permanently to the group and the results of its process. They are treated by a plan defined by the group and a support role, working thoroughly for days for solving a problem based on defined objectives.
• systemic: affect the structure of the whole process and they need a specifically developed plan to be solved.

To solve these problems we must follow four steps:

• Know the objective: understand the process goal
• Analyze and understand current situation: determine and quantify initial point and current problems
• Identify future situation to reach: define "what", not "how"
• Identify obstacles that prevent reaching that future situation: for each of them set actions to eliminate them. Each of them is planned, executed and checked if it meets expectations. It is an iteration until desired situation is reached.

For obtaining that solutions, there must be a suggestion culture inside company, in order to obtain proposals for any person that wants to express his opinion.

Tell me and I'll forget, teach me and I'll remember, involve me and I'll learn. Benjamin Franklin.

Workshops that evaluate problems and propose solutions follow this structure:

• purpose of the workshop
• Current status of the problem
• Desired status
• Proposal of improvements
• Experiments of fast implementation
• Results
• Lessons learnt
• Standardization

5. plan of transformation

the plan of transformation arises all problems that need to be solved. It has to be specified and written in order to make it visible and reviewed.

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Implementation

To implement this process we need:

• to express properly the need for a change and its motivations.
• A team needs to lead the change and ease first steps. Every change puts a person in an uncertainty status that make them feel uncomfortable, what may cause an impact on the psychological level.
• Reach objectives in the short term, consolidate them and empower change.

Requirements to improve a process

Stability

Process can't be affected by external variability and must be in a reliable and predictable environment under a predefined conditions.

Flexibility

It is the capacity of making a change in a process with a minimum time loss.

Syncronization (pull-flow)

Every process must work only to produce what it is intended to do, without consuming other resources to reach unnecessary goals.

Grouping

Consists on grouping those processes that are made by different groups and merge them in one group.

Types of groups of people

During the change, there will be three types of groups:

• change agents: committed and motivated with the change.
• spectators: will adapt to change when results are materialized.
• antichange: exceptical or stoppers of the change.
  

It is more important to focus on antichange than helping change agents do their work. When change has been implemented, in antichangers do not feel comfortable with new culture, they may evolve in another company that has a better professional and personal profile for them.