Lean manufacturing and Chariots Of The Gods

Recently I was watching a series of video on interesting topic “Ancient Aliens”. Now for sure that has nothing to do with lean manufacturing. I was watching some videos and somehow came through this video series and loved it.

No, I am not going to tell you what it was all about. If you like to watch it, you can do so by following this link (it is a 10 part series). Chariots of the Gods is one of the books discussed in this program. If you have any questions about the topic, this might have solved it.

There were many fascinating points in this video. But as a lean thinker, one point (probably the one point which they never discussed in the video) caught my attention. That is, people have knowledge today, and they had it yesterday too. There was no era where knowledge was absent. It was present all the way. It took many shapes and forms due to many reasons like political, environmental and spiritual.

Today, we look back and think how these “Not So Advanced” people did all these. We, with computers and satellites even find it difficult to do. How these people made pyramids, how they created the Great Wall of China, how they drew maps of the word, we wonder. In simple terms we think we are advanced and they are not so advanced.

So what is the connection to lean, you may ask. Here it is. Most of the lean consultants or change agents, take completely wrong first step in making an organization lean. They think lean, that’s all they think. They look for waste (As they should be) and lose all the nuggets of gold in the process. Not only they do not see these gold nuggets, they throw them away, sometimes with the people who owned them.  What are these gold nuggets? They are the existing practices and processes.

They were built over a long period of time. There is a huge amount of thinking gone in to them. They are perfectly working in the current set up. Being lean doesn’t mean all these have to be changed. First a good lean consultant should understand what the current best practices are. Why they work so well. And they have to evaluate them to see whether we should change them at all. Remember, non lean organizations also do exists. They do for a reason. They can even compete with the lean manufacturers. Nissans and Volvos still do compete with Toyota. By no means non lean players are “Not So Advanced” or “Stone Age” people.

This is why I am not so convinced with the idea of using Japanese terms in lean implementations. They look alien to the people and make them go into the defensive mode. They will respect you for what you know, but you will not get much as they do not follow what you know.

Marrying lean with the existing culture is one of the very important things in lean. If a “non lean” organization has a reward program to reward their employee for the best idea, marry it with the Kaizen. Call it whatever it was called earlier. If they have a routine cleaning activity, marry it with 5S, and call it what it was called earlier. Name is not so important. If they have a very simple problem tracking mechanism, do not do anything. Just let it be there. Not all need to be changed in the name of lean. I think you get the idea.

This will make the resistance to change minimal. People will love lean, even without them knowing it. What do you think? Do you agree with me? Or do you think otherwise. Please leave your comments. If you like this post, please tell it to the world by clicking the “LIKE” button below.