Page 209 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

Cultur es 187

• Is your training treated as a process with a high level of importance manifest
through the actions of the training group? Or is training the first item to be
compromised in a conflict, or actually cut when costs need to be trimmed?
• Are your workers trained and supported by a system that will allow them to
produce 100 percent salable product? If not, why not, and what are the con-
sequences of that?

What Should We Do with Our Lean Culture?
We can now see that the culture cannot be orchestrated directly; rather, the culture is the
result of what we do. Consequently, it is not wise to develop a culture until we decide
precisely what we must do, and it may take a while for us to decide just what we want
to do in our Lean initiative. Let’s say, for example, we want to implement line shutdowns
by the line operator when a quality defect is found. What if we make one defect an hour?
Are the workers trained to make the evaluations? Are the problem solvers ready to jump
into action every hour? Are we ready to suffer the production impacts of a line stoppage
each hour? These are but a few of the questions that need to be answered. If we do not
have the right answers to these questions, we should not try to implement this Lean
technique. Worse than not starting is to start, fail, and then regress to an earlier state.
This is why I recommend not worrying too much about the depth of your culture at
this point. First, every change made will create a change in the culture. So, without trying
to directly change the culture, it will change anyway. Second, the large cultural impacts—
such as empowering workers to shut down production lines—did not come early, nor
did they come easily to Toyota. Now it is commonplace in the TPS, but they did not start
this way, nor should you. Finally, many people talk about cultures and changing cul-
tures, but a scarce few really know what they are doing. At some point, it will be neces-
sary to seek help in this aspect—even your sensei is probably not an expert in cultures.

Make the Minimum Necessary Changes
We have consistently avoided the topic of cultural change as a separate entity. Not
because it will not be beneficial, but because there is plenty of technical and organiza-
tional stuff to do. Focused projects of cultural change are very time consuming and
management-intensive, and often the changes obtained do not yield immediate finan-
cial benefits. We have found it is better to modify the manufacturing system first, much
as Ohno did, and then focus on the culture later.
However, two aspects of the TPS culture should be addressed at the assessment.
Two of The Five Precursors to Implementing a Lean Initiative are major cultural change
issues. They are:

• A continuous improvement policy
• A policy to sustain the gains
Both of these should be included in the initial Lean Implementation Plan until both
are at level 3, per the assessment.
What If We Still Want to Modify Our Culture?
If this is still your desire, I laud your attitude. There is no technique with more power to
leverage your management skills than to work on your culture. Unfortunately, this is a