Lean Stratergy

GOING LEAN : Shock and Awe V Slow and Grow

Niharika Remella

ISE  251 - Managing the Lean Enterprise Improvement Program

San Jose State University

Strategy is defining and laying out a path that places you ahead of your competitors . To see the full result of any strategy it needs to be absorbed by every process in the enterprise straight from the production floor, ranging through all aspects of business.Lean encompasses every aspect of a business ranging from sales to human resources, albeit all the original lean strategies pertaining only to manufacturing. It helps make any organization re-think their systems to adapt quickly to dynamic needs and wants of their consumers in an efficient fashion.

A prime example of this is Southwest Airlines, they surprised everyone with their low fares when they came out and started the trend of budget airlines in the US. Sure they invested in oil way before the steep rise in it’s price and their bet paid off, but some of the major contributing factors was their lean operations, they only one kind of flights, the Boeing 737, they did not have multiple seating classes - by removing options and streamlining everything they optimized their operations, they did not serve meals on their flights, they did not fly into major airports keeping their fee low, for example it’s cheaper to land a flight in Dallas Love Field as opposed to Dallas Fort Worth.

Many successful enterprises will attribute their success to a combination of effective strategy and efficient leadership. This combination is key for any venture to work well. Lean strategy can be used to screen new ideas and test hypothesis before integrating them fully into your processes. Lean strategy promotes employees on the floor to come up with ideas to better identify and solve problems but also ensures that everyone is on board with the changes so that time only spent on ideas that result in maximum value. Time is a currency of lean after all

Traditionally Executives strategize and decide how to implement them, while the employees await instruction this curbs innovation at the very least and damages employee morale at the most. Lean organization leaders on the other hand are well aware that people who get their hands dirty understand the problems better and are better equipped to come up with better hacks to fix them.

A staggering 95% of the firms that try to go lean fail miserably, not due to their lack of effort but because they see it as an operations tactic. After reading the debate between Dan Markovitz and Art Byrne, I believe that for lean to be most effective it needs to be integrated at a rapid pace to sell the idea to the Entrepreneur/CEO.

Art’s approach to “Shock and Awe” has more credibility as he worked with a multitude of organizations and succeeded. Living in an era where data is what aids you in making decisions the best way to get the executives or the employees to buy into your cause is by showing them proof that it works and how. If you can simplify the work and speed the process by a lot why put them through a slower learning curve during which there is a high probability that they might lose interest in the initiative.

Art’s work at Wiremold only proves how effective his approach can be. They could reduce 90% in setup time just after a one week kaizen. Employees will feel so much more accomplished this way than sitting through multiple kaizens to even see a reduction in setup time as low as 10% . People are capable of so much more than what we give them credit for and can push themselves to excel.

Dan Markovitz is right in arguing that by changing everything about your work without creating proper awareness can be frustrating but it is true that people tend to get very comfortable in a job, if you try and introduce change gradually it is highly likely that they have enough time to plot a strong opposition against it.