3e2a1b56-dafb-454d-87ad-86adea3e7b86

550
Part Four
Improvement
Lean as an improvement approach
The idea of lean (also known as just-in-time, lean synchronization, continuous flow operations,
and so on) spread beyond its Japanese roots and became fashionable in the West at
about the same time as TQM. And although its popularity has not declined to the same
extent as TQM’s, over 25 years of experience (at least in manufacturing), have diminished
the excitement once associated with the approach. But, unlike TQM, it was seen initially as
an approach to be used exclusively in manufacturing. Now, lean has become newly fashionable
as an approach that can be applied in service operations. As a reminder (see Chapter 15)
the lean approach aims to meet demand instantaneously, with perfect quality and no waste.
Put another way, it means that the flow of products and services always delivers exactly what
customers want (perfect quality), in exact quantities (neither too much nor too little), exactly
when needed (not too early or too late), exactly where required (not to the wrong location),
and at the lowest possible cost. It results in items flowing rapidly and smoothly through
processes, operations and supply networks. The key elements of the lean when used as an
improvement approach are as follows.
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Customer-centricity
Internal customer–supplier relationships
Perfection is the goal
Synchronized flow
Reduce variation
Include all people
Waste elimination.
Some organizations, especially now that lean is being applied more widely in service
operations, view waste elimination as the most important of all the elements of the lean
approach. In fact, they sometimes see the lean approach as consisting almost exclusively
of waste elimination. What they fail to realize is that effective waste elimination is best
achieved through changes in behaviour. It is the behavioural change brought about through
synchronized flow and customer triggering that provides the window onto exposing and
eliminating waste.
It is easy to forget just how radical, and more importantly, counter-intuitive lean once
seemed. Although ideas of continuous improvement were starting to be accepted, the idea
that inventories were generally a bad thing, and that throughput time was more important
than capacity utilization seemed to border on the insane to the more traditionally minded.
So, as lean ideas have been gradually accepted, we have likewise come to be far more tolerant
of ideas that are radical and/or counter-intuitive. This is an important legacy because it
opened up the debate on operations practice and broadened the scope of what are regarded
as acceptable approaches. It is also worth remembering that when Taiichi Ohno wrote his
seminal book 7 on lean (after retiring from Toyota in 1978) he was able to portray Toyota’s
manufacturing plants as embodying a coherent production approach. However, this encouraged
observers to focus in on the specific techniques of lean production and de-emphasized
the importance of 30 years of ‘trial and error’. Maybe the real achievement of Toyota was not
so much what they did but how long they stuck at it.
Business process re-engineering (BPR)
The idea of business process re-engineering originated in the early 1990s when Michael Hammer
proposed that rather than using technology to automate work, it would be better applied
to doing away with the need for the work in the first place (‘don’t automate, obliterate’).
In doing this he was warning against establishing non-value-added work within an information
technology system where it would be even more difficult to identify and eliminate. All
work, he said, should be examined for whether it adds value for the customer and if not processes
should be redesigned to eliminate it. In doing this BPR was echoing similar objectives