Valuable Information

as you begin the Lean transformation

Lean Manufacturing

  • Sharing improvement opportunities with AVEX company leadership, Nagoya Japan
  • Some of the Drive team at the Kata Summit.
  • Chapman leading problem solving workshop
  • Manny Baerga with Mike Rother.
  • Chapman leads a kanban sizing discussion
  • Coaching Kata Event
  • Drive members with Mr. Kato the Chairman of AVEX Corporation, Aichi Japan
  • Defining format of a project A3
  • Meeting with some of the Masters of Maintenance

We succinctly define Lean as a system to identify and solve problems utilizing all of your people. A startling statistic is that 70% of companies who have embarked upon a Lean Journey are dissatisfied with the results they’ve achieved (McKenzie & Bain study). Why is this? The biggest reason is the misconception that Lean is nothing more than a set of tools. It is typical to think it is a matter of tools and endeavor to learn and implement the Lean tools, not understanding that each Lean tool is a countermeasure to a specific problem (this is a profoundly important point). Part of the fault lies with the term “Lean Manufacturing” itself. That term was coined to market the Toyota Production System (TPS) to western manufacturers. In addition, much of the early teaching on the subject in the USA was focused on the implementation of Lean Tools. If we had kept the original name, it would have clued us in to the fact that what we are talking about here is a System (a holistic system, at that), not a collection of independent tools.

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