How to Fix a Continuous Improvement Effort That Stalls – and It Will Stall
Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) June 05, 2017 -- After years of overseeing and participating in successful continuous improvement (kaizen) events, Lantech CEO Jim Lancaster was listening to an improvement team report results from its latest effort when he had an unsettling déjà vu moment.
“I’ve heard this before,” he said, vividly recalling the incident a decade ago. “I’ve heard this problem before and I’ve heard this solution before in this area.”
In a frank interview, Lancaster tells Lean Blog Podcast host Mark Graban that he ultimately realized the company was repeating improvement activities that had deteriorated after just a couple of years. As a result, much of the work from implementing lean wasn’t hitting the bottom line.
A star of the early lean movement in the 1990s, Lantech earned acclaim converting operations from wasteful batch production to efficient flow production, dramatically cutting costs and customer lead times while increasing manufacturing velocity and quality. It freed millions of dollars in inventory and a large number of resources. The remarkable results were featured in the Harvard Business Review and business best-seller Lean Thinking.
But like many companies implementing continuous improvement strategies, Lantech struggled over time to sustain gains and improve financial performance significantly.
Improving Continuous Improvement
In the just-released podcast #283, Lancaster explains how the Louisville, KY-maker of stretch wrapping equipment, learned how to sustain the benefits of continuous improvement activities to spur growth and become much more profitable. The key to revitalizing the program was Lancaster spending months designing and managing frontline work himself. He realized first-hand how fluctuation in hundreds of variables, which is inevitable in any work environment, caused processes to deteriorate, despite the best continuous improvement efforts.
As a result, Lantech developed a new daily management system of “cascading, cross-functional, standardized steps” for every employee and executive. The system connects all the value-adding work of the business to support resources that catch and reverse process deterioration immediately every single day.
Lancaster and Graban discuss:
• Early success when lean consultants “descended” on Lantech
• Why success later turned into “frustration”
• Key lessons Lancaster – and every CEO – will learn by actually designing and maintaining frontline standard work
• The two big mistakes in judgement executives will make when they are “distant” from frontline work
• The management blunder that causes lean efforts to unintentionally slip from a priority into a sideline “hobby”
• Why and how catching and reversing process deterioration quickly supercharges competitiveness and profits
Listen or download the podcast at http://www.leanblog.org/283
Lancaster reveals more how-to details about the daily management system’s development and implementation in The Work of Management: A Daily Path to Real Improvement, just published by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute.
About the Book
• ISBN: 978-1-934109-02-1
• Pages: 171
• Price: $35.00
• Editors/Producers/Bloggers: For review copies of The Work of Management or to interview the author, contact LEI Communications Director Chet Marchwinski 617-871-2930 or cmarchwinski at lean dot org.
Readers can buy the book at: https://www.lean.org/BookStore/ProductDetails.cfm?SelectedProductId=410
About Lantech
Lantech is known as the leader in stretch wrap technology and innovation, as well as case handling equipment. It has sales and manufacturing headquarters in Louisville, KY, sales and manufacturing facilities in The Netherlands, and sales and service operations in Australia and China. Annual gross sales exceed $130 million. Lantech employs approximately 475 associates. Visit lantech.com/about for more information
About LEI
Lean Enterprise Institute Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Cambridge, MA, with a mission to make things better through lean thinking and practice. Founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, PhD, LEI conducts research, teaches educational workshops, publishes books and ebooks, runs conferences, and shares practical information about lean thinking and practice. Visit lean.org for more information.
Chet Marchwinski, Lean Enterprise Institute, http://www.lean.org, +1 (617) 871-2930, [email protected]
Share this article