Page 53 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

34 Cha pte r T w o

for example, but if that is out of reach, it is not uncommon for them to make a huge
change in the middle of the season. They will fire the coach and release veteran players
with their large salaries, with the hope of becoming more competitive next year.
Recall the Florida Marlins who, immediately after winning the World Series,
completely liquidated their high-paid roster and sunk to the bottom of the league the
next year. I am surprised some ticket holders did not start a class-action lawsuit against
them. Whether to liquidate a roster like that is legal or not, I do not know, but it certainly
is not aimed at providing value to the customer. Nor is it the sign of a business striving
to compete. It is the height of arrogance toward ticket holders.
Sports teams may be the perfect place that Lean is doomed to failure. They have no
survival issues at all. In fact, they are a monopoly with practically a guaranteed income
via television. Second, they have no interest in waste reduction at all. Indeed, they
intentionally increase wastes as they can pass the costs on with impunity. Third, there
is no sense of long-term stability. In fact, their mantra is “What have you done for me
recently?” Finally, all their protestations to the contrary, they no longer consider the
individual fan to be their customer. With the price of tickets so high, the vast majority
of tickets are bought by businesses. In addition, the majority of the income is from tele-
vision so the networks are their customers, in reality.
Charities
What about charities? They have no profit motive and consequently there is insufficient
motivation to make Lean work. In fact, I have worked with charities that have the end-
of-the-budget-year problem of not spending all of their grant money. So fearing they
will get less next year, they find ways to spend the money. Rather than reduce waste,
they frequently create waste.

Not-for-Profits
What about other not-for-profits? A lot is said about Lean in the government—the entity
that is supposed to be serving you and me. I think they have lost sight of who their
customers really should be. To apply Lean as a guiding philosophy in the top levels of
government management, I see no hope whatsoever. The top few are interested in
survival, but the survival issue is not the survival of the business (government), rather
it is their individual job survival that is of importance to them. Their primary focus is
on the self-serving survival issue of reelection. Reelection efforts are fueled by money,
which is received through such things as PACs, which are largely supported by busi-
nesses. The “customer” of the high-ranking government official is more likely to be a
PAC or large donor than Joe citizen. The PACs and large businesses are not interested
in Grandma Jones getting her Social Security check. They are interested in their own
self-serving purposes. So in the application of Lean as a business philosophy, this is a
complete misfit.
I do see some hope for the application of many Lean tools (refer to Chap. 20), but not
from the top. Lean tools are exactly what is needed at the level of government with
which you and I interact. For example, at the Social Security Office, or the Department
of Motor Vehicles, it has tremendous applications. At the “service provider” level, far
removed from the top-level politicians, all these agencies use processes that could eas-
ily benefit from applications of the tools of Lean Manufacturing. Since the Lean tools
are so powerful at waste reduction, some clever politician who wants to make a name
for himself has a powerful tool at his disposal. If he applied it at the right time in the