Today I had the chance to attend the tenth Lean meeting (or Leankedada as it was named) organized in Bizkaia. Lean manufacturing and industry 4.0 experts talked about the subject from their perspective and I found it a great oportunity to learn more about the least talked aspects during my university education. First I’ll explain, in the simplest way possible, what Lean manufacturing is about for those new to the topic.
Lean manufacturing is a method of work organization centered around the continous improvement and the optimization of the production system through the elimination of waste and activities that don’t add value to the process.
So, what does it mean to apply Lean in organizations?
It needs the cultural transformation of every member of the organization. From employees to managers everyone must take part.
In exchange it provides help identifying waste and helps avoiding them. It also improves quality of the products as it reduces the variability of them, also means the client service level improves and the production costs go down. And last but not least, Lean manufacturing improves security conditions as all this philosophy loses sense if applied in a non secure enviroment.
Then… if Lean manufacturing is as good as is said, why isn’t applied in every industry of the world?
The reality is that businesses won’t change unless they are really sure about it. They need to see the need of change to actually start applying new methods.
The industry is very conservative and will only change when they are thoroughly sure risks are minimal and improvements are big enough.
Lean manufacturing implementation barriers:
- Management conviction: If the management of the company doesn’t see the need, becomes really difficult the application of this philosophy.
- Resistance to change: It’s hard to get out of the confort zone. Actually there are a lot of reasons for that, but it’s necessary to improve.
- Not enough leader profiles able to lead this changes. It must be done with patience, humility, respect…
- Not getting carried away by the day to day work: Any time necessary for the improvements is used for useless work, mostly from proceses in need of that improvement. This in essence turns into a vicious cycle that would never allow the implementation of a Lean philosophy.
Even so, companies seek outside help to implement Lean manufacturing. During the meeting no conclusion was reached on this particular topic. In my opinion, the use of external resources is, above all, a way to avoid the barriers previously described.