Page 52 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Pr oduction System 33

• Where will it simply not work at all?
• Does it apply to the production line only?
• Does it apply to the staff functions in the manufacturing plant as well?
• Does it apply equally well to all aspects of manufacturing, regardless of product
or customer?
• Can it be applied to all businesses regardless of product or customer?
• Does it only work in manufacturing and not in the service sector?
• Are there applications for it in the nonprofit sector as well?

A Two-Part Discussion: The Enterprise Level and the Product Level
The Toyota Production System and, hence, Lean Manufacturing was designed based on
a certain set of business conditions. It would seem to make sense that the uses of Lean
Manufacturing might have applications beyond the production of automobiles. Like-
wise, it seems reasonable to assume that if you diverge significantly from these basic
business conditions, the applicability of Lean Manufacturing concepts and tools might
wane as well. So it would make sense that the application of lean concepts and tools
may not have infinitely wide applications.
In fact, after some review it seems that at the enterprise level—or some may call it
the business level—the enterprise must be driven by four basic concepts. Lacking any
of these, the enterprise is poorly suited to use Lean as a primary business philosophy.
These basic concepts are:
• The enterprise must be in a competitive free-market environment. For those
entities that are not struggling for profits and or survival, there is simply
insufficient motivation to undergo the discomfort of the huge cultural changes
it takes to implement a Lean initiative.
• There must be a clear customer focus. The enterprise must know who the
customers are, what they need, and what they want. The enterprise must
continually work to supply their needs and work to be ever improving in both
finding and meeting the needs of the customer. In Leanspeak, these needs and
wants of the customer are value.
• In supplying value to the customer, a key strategy must be the elimination of
waste.
• The business must have a long-term focus, even at the expense of short-term
gains.
Hence, entities that do not have a strong customer focus, that are not interested in
survival and growth, and that are not willing to drive out waste over the long term
would not be good candidates for Lean as a guiding business philosophy. In fact, in
almost all cases such as this, Lean simply will not work.
Some examples of this are covered in the following sections.

Sports Teams
Professional sports teams are very bad candidates since they are focused almost solely
on short-term gains. They may look only to the end of the season for the Super Bowl,