Never forget the building blocks of lean manufacturing

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After seven years, I am writing my final Continuous Improvement column for The FABRICATOR. We have covered a lot of territory: continuous improvement, lean body of knowledge, your lean journey, and incorporating Six Sigma into your approach to improvement.

When you put lean and continuous improvement into historical perspective, you have to hearken back to the 1950s and the development of the Toyota Production System (TPS) or even back to Ford Motor Co. and River Rouge. What’s the common denominator between these early manufacturing environments and today and the future? A succinct way to state it for all manufacturers and fabricators is, “People use machines to make widgets.”

The widgets might be simple piece-parts, full assemblies, or complex systems that integrate parts and assemblies. Over the years, part tolerances have tightened, machines have gotten more sophisticated, and people have expected a greater voice in how manufacturing and business in general are conducted.

Think of the speed of this evolution just within the scope of your working lifetime and that of your parents or grandparents. The pace of change has accelerated and will likely continue accelerating into the future.

I’ve covered tactical how-to topics as well as organizational management, such how to develop and deploy a lean strategy as well as how to encourage or deal with certain behaviors. Within that breadth of topics, a few core ideas ring true:

The speed of user-friendly capabilities in equipment and processes will have a big impact on the role of technology in lean operations. On one hand, processes will be democratized by moving the ability for and expectation of decision-making closer to the front line. For example, can the operator program the weld robot directly in the work area at the workstation? On the other hand, some machines will still require specialized engineering talent to design and tune programs. Neither of these extremes is right or wrong, but both are coming at you at warp speed.

Your challenge will be to design lean into these operations. The lean basics will transcend into the future just as they have transcended from earlier in the 20th century. As you consider new technology and automation, you have the opportunity to design lean ideas into the process. Examples might include how materials and parts are presented to and taken away from the workcenter. As specifications for a new machine are being developed, you might include employees who can represent the total productive maintenance function by identifying preventive maintenance issues, such as access for daily PM activities for operators or recommendations for quarterly or semiannual activities for maintenance technicians. Make the equipment acquisition process more inclusive for people who work around the equipment every day (operators, production supervisors, and maintenance technicians, for example), as well as those who schedule and plan production.

In the future, where will the working knowledge for your operations reside? Will it be centralized in the hands of a few (the way many manufacturers have traditionally operated), or will the knowledge be dispersed deeper into the organization—and ultimately to the front line? Industry trends will likely move toward the latter. This will spur the need for creative work instructions. User-friendly electronic standard work instructions will continue to displace paper instructions and (thankfully) the practices gleaned from undocumented tribal knowledge.

In the past, manufacturers and fabricators may have used people for their strong backs. With the emergence of lean practices, enhanced production equipment, and creative material handling, the model employee is now less about the strong back and more about the strong mind.

As supervisors, managers, and leaders, you must seek ways to engage employees effectively so that they are challenged and enriched. In short, you’ll need to ensure their jobs are fulfilling. This remains especially important as you compete for skilled people in a marketplace where prospective employees are scarce and every member of your current workforce has options. What are you doing today to fulfill and enrich them while running a profitable business? The answer is not just about money.

Two fundamental ideas in the lean body of knowledge are respect people and operate with humility. Regardless of what happens with technology, these ideas won’t go away. They have withstood the test of time and will continue to be essential building blocks of successful leadership. You might find it hard to practice these ideas at times, especially if you have come from traditional styles of management with one-way communication, little appetite for shop floor input, and an attitude of “just make the numbers.”

The business of manufacturing and fabrication is challenging, exciting, and filled with unexpected disruptions and advancements. The lean body of knowledge is a foundation your company can continue to build on. How you apply these principles, methods, and techniques down the road, given the speed of technological and societal changes, may present questions without answers. But rest assured, the lean body of knowledge will stand the test of time in the future just as it has in the past.

So, in conclusion, I wish everyone great success as you seek the pinnacle of success in your respective businesses and markets. May yours become a lean model organization that others recognize and seek to emulate!