How do you bring Lean Thinking to your organisation? There are a few ways you can access the skills and knowledge of Lean Thinking. One way is to put your Lean Champions through a recognised qualification such as cert III or Cert IV in Competitive Systems and Practices. (Competitive manufacturing as it used to be known as). Often there can be funding for this qualification but the strategy has some drawbacks. One of the first problems is that the focus is on the qualification rather than the business outcomes. This neednt be a problem if your Company is ready to empower your Champions to make change and apply what they learn in the workplace. However my experience is that this is rarely the case. This often limits what can be achieved by the students, especially if the business is unclear about what changes you are prepared to make, or what the business needs to change first. Another way is to find a guide or consultant to mentor the team through the change process. This will usually prove to be the most cost effective since all activity is business focused. Most consultants or facilitators have valuable experience about what works and what doesnt and can bring solutions from other businesses to accelerate your teams learning curve. Lean Thinking is all about sharing ideas and solutions. Most important of all is for a business to have a clear vision of what needs to be done and where. A consultant or facilitator can work between the various levels of a business to develop a plan that can be understood by all, and portable between the various levels and departments. Since implementing Lean Thinking is a whole if business approach, the process can take five years to establish a sustainable continuous improvement system. One that will survive after the consultant has gone. Developing a long term relationship with a consultant will in the long run deliver improvements that cost less, and deliver more than if a team go it alone armed with nothing more than a qualification.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 01:39:46 +0000
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