Lean manufacturing without vision

I am facing this interesting question day after day. Lots of people and organizations want to adopt lean manufacturing in their working places, but asked why they have no definite answer. Even in facilities known to be following lean practices, if you ask ten people about their expectations of lean, most of the times all the ten answers can vary fundamentally.

There are some organizations where everyone in the organization is passionate about lean and reads and do various lean and kaizen activities, yet the organization as a single unit do not know what they want out of lean. This is lean implemented without vision or without sharing the vision to the organization. In fact lean initiatives without proper vision will lead to more confusion and problems than elimination of waste. This can lead to sub optimization which is treated as an enemy in lean context.

Lean manufacturing does not start form its tools or techniques. It is the conceptual alignment of lean to your organizational needs and requirements will add value to your organization. If these lean initiatives are not channeled through a proper vision and coordination the system will not be manageable and will lead to confusion. All the parties involved in lean initiatives must understand and live the values of lean. All these parties must rally around the organizational vision and objectives of lean to be effective.

It is important to not assume that all your employees understand your vision of lean, you must check and confirm that they do truly. So how to identify this? Simple, select few employees from various areas of your organization and ask them what they actually want to achieve with lean. If you are not getting the answer the organization is looking for regularly, this means that there is a lag in communicating the vision. If you are getting the similar wrong answers continuously this means there is some problem in the communication channels you have used and it has altered the meaning of its lean values and vision. So correct the wrong impression and communicate the correct vision. If you get a mix result, it is the time to effectively communicate the vision of your lean initiative to your employees again.

Lean manufacturing without vision can do more harm to your organization than good. All the efforts must align to your vision on lean and pull in the same direction to make your lean effort effective and useful.