Page 170 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

148 Cha pte r Ei g h t

• At some point these goals will clash with the plant goals. It is best to simply
weave them into the plant goals. If the plant goals do not reflect the need to be
Lean, change the plant goals.
• We want to make as much effort as we can to weave the Lean initiative into the
normal workings of the plant and not make it a “New Thing We Do.” Rather, it
should not be a new thing, but a new way of doing the things we need to do. We
want to begin immediately weaving Lean activities into the culture, which will
start the needed cultural change to sustain the gains. There is no better point to
start than right here.

What to Do with the Plan?

Management Review
The plan needs management review, discussion, and acceptance. This should be done
in a formal meeting. This formal review is done for four reasons.

• It will show, in one document, what is going to happen and when.
• It will give top management, the movers and shakers, an opportunity to see the
entire effort. They can see and comment on those things in their areas of
responsibility and also those changes outside their areas, but these changes still
might affect them. In short, they will have an opportunity to bring up questions.
• Any plan includes the topics of objectives, timing, and resources. This meeting
will allow a check on not only those three topics, but their interrelationships as
well.
• How they respond to the plan will be a reality check on the commitment of the
top management. This is most important.

It is necessary to make sure, at this meeting, that everyone understands that the
next step is implementation. You want to leave the meeting with the understanding that
the top management understands and will support the plan, because in five minutes
you will implement it.

Publish and Follow-up
Immediately following the meeting, publish the plan and put it into action.
Let the Fun Begin!

Chapter Summary
The book How to Implement Lean Manufacturing is summarized in this chapter. First, we
make evaluations using the following tools:
• The three fundamental issues to cultural change, outlined in Chap. 6.
• The fourfold evaluation of the present manufacturing system, including the
commitment evaluations, five precursors to Lean, ten reasons Lean initiatives
fail, and process maturity (found in Chap. 19).