Successful companies have long relied on clear communication between team members and leaders, and a willingness to embrace, evaluate, and try new ideas from the shop floor. When practiced informally, however, there are limitations to this approach. Leadership bias or skill gaps can get in the way, and those leaders typically don’t even know that those barriers exist.
Not all ideas are heard and considered, resulting in improvement ideas falling by the wayside. Meanwhile, employees who do not have the skillset to look for opportunities and cooperatively problem-solve may be ill-equipped to contribute. When ideas aren’t heard or if they are not clearly articulated, they eventually stop coming. The result is an operation that isn’t getting better every day. Can you afford to be that company?
That’s where a lean team can help. Lean is a business philosophy aimed at reducing operational waste and improving efficiency. In the process, it can help reduce costs, increase productivity and maintain high quality, thus contributing to profitability. Unlike informal approaches to improvement, the lean approach is structured. And while no one likes needless bureaucracy, adopting at least some of that structure can help improve the likelihood of the best ideas from the plant floor getting put into action, while building employee engagement at the same time.
Here are some ideas about starting or improving your lean team:
1. When is the right time for lean manufacturing principles?
Some companies get interested in lean because they have heard about its benefits and want to improve efficiency and employee engagement. It can also be a way to demonstrate value to customers or a response to softer market conditions. Pallet One, for example, started its lean journey in 2008 after being urged by a large account. The company purchased a lean video series, which it studied, and then put its lean program in effect. “In 2008 the economy was poor,” recalled Howe Wallace, CEO of PalletOne, one of the nation’s largest pallet companies. PalletOne recognized that competition was tight, and that it would not be able to pass cost increases onto customers. “We needed to find our savings and margins internally,” he said. “To identify waste and inefficiencies in our execution felt like a wise strategy.”
2. What does a lean team look like?
Lean teams are typically small, with some experts suggesting four to six team members plus a leader. Others cite Amazon’s “two pizza” approach to teams. If two pizzas won’t feed the team, then it is too large. Cross-functionality of the team is also stressed. By having people in the group who can answer questions promptly, ideas can be scrutinized more promptly. For example, the team might want to include someone from your maintenance department to get timely feedback on ideas involving equipment. Project-specific teams might require higher degrees of cross-functionality.
“When we have special projects in a plant, we have a team of maintenance, operations and plant leadership involved,” Wallace stated. “We rely on the cross-functional nature of things to make sure our solutions are complete. Because of our multi-site and corporate staff, we can add folks from multiple locations when the projects are planned and implemented.”
It is essential to develop a lean approach that reflects your company culture. A textbook Toyota Production System Lean template might not be the right fit for your company, so customize to fit. While Pallet One has incorporated many of the most common lean practices such as 6S, employee involvement and focusing on waste, Wallace stressed that their approach has been adapted to meet their sensibilities. “It would be an overstatement to say that you can walk through our plants and see us doing lean things in the Toyota fashion,” he commented.
3. What does a lean team do?
Quite simply, a lean team looks for opportunities to eliminate operational waste to improve efficiency. While lean manufacturing looks at how to eliminate seven wastes, Pallet One focuses on three of them: wasted time, wasted material and wasted motion.
Pallet One’s process involves sticking to the facts and maintaining trust. It uses specific terms to keep the lean team on track. “Facts on the table” directs team members to focus on facts surrounding the problem rather than anything personal. “We try to move away from blaming, complaining and defensiveness,” Wallace said. “We “put trust in the gap” which means that we attribute to every teammate the best intent and best effort until we determine that it isn’t so. Putting trust in the gap requires that you “seek to understand” before you make assumptions about what is going on.”
4. Lean never stops
One of the things that Wallace has recently written about for the PalletOne blog is being 1% better every day. Ongoing incremental improvements can be compelling in aggregate, so it is crucial to maintain a passion for improvement. “You have to be disciplined to continue to look for ways to improve, and they don’t ever stop,” Wallace concluded. “It informs how we discuss things, and how we look at our business.”
If you want to address wastes in your operations, it takes a team to identify and correct the issues. Consider who shows a willingness to improve processes in their department. These may be some of the best people to help you start your lean revolution.
