Competing October 2005 Edition

“We are good enough.”
(or are we?)

What do you think your competition is focusing on right now? Do you believe they are thinking “ABC Inc (your company) has been working on lean for a while now and we will never catch them”… or “ABC Inc delivers in half the time we do and we will never catch them”. I don’t, in fact, I believe they are doing everything they can to catch and then pass you. Earlier this week I went to the Flyers home opener against the New York Rangers. The Flyers are expected to win the Stanley Cup, while the Rangers are not expected to even make the playoffs. Well, the Flyers get off to a 3 to 1 lead and the game was beginning to look like an easy victory, but then…………..the Rangers score 4 unanswered goals. What happened? Well, after the game the Flyer’s coach and some of the players admitted that they were “outworked in the third period”. The net result, the Flyers lost to their competition 5-3 because they were outworked. I suspect you do not wish a similar fate.

If your company has begun its lean journey you must constantly remind yourselves “we are a lean enterprise every minute of every day from now on.”

Continuous Improvement

The most used and most effective tool to sustain and continue improving is the Gemba Walk or Manager’s walk. It takes more than a report to sustain lean gains. Cultural change must occur on the shop floor and the front office. Successful lean
managers must show their commitment to importance of the new manufacturing/operational strategy by inspecting what they expect and getting out of their offices and walking and talking to their teams in every area of the enterprise. (Being noticed noticing)

As a result of a rapid improvement event, standard layouts, standard work
and standard job instructions should have been developed and posted at point of
use.

Behavioral change requires conditioning or breaking old habits. Gemba walks to the area of recent kaizen activity must be repeated often to accomplish this.

In closing, all of us are not as competitive as we could be. We have unlimited potential, resting on our laurels will only make us an easy target for our competition.
Sustain gains and strive to constantly make new ones.

Going a “mile wide and an inch deep” is a mistake, but so is being satisfied with “6 inches wide and 12 inches deep”.

Don’t allow yourselves to get outworked by your competition.

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