„The caravan is arranged on the way” (you make it up as you go)
This is how the implementation of our Continuous Improvement program started. No big planning cycles, no program charter, no framework, no standards yet. The big news is that it was intentional - we wanted to use an “agile” way of iterational approach to create a tailor made solution fitting to our values, principles & culture. So we stated our experimentation cycles, inspecting and adapting as we went through the process – to conclude: we started the doing instead of excessive planning, preparation workshops, release and alignment cycles, etc.
What was available was a vision though, some principles and a rough plan for the first months to make it run.
You may have various concerns in mind. I can maybe give you the answer to one of them: yes, you have to take some risks. On the other hand i never asked myself if I would be successful or not, I fully believed in it or to reformulate – the belief was always in me although I didn’t know exactly how.
Taking risks and never questioning your believe, keeping the vision and being able to sharpen and refining it according to the customer needs were the basis for us to start the journey.
And this is as well the basis for entrepreneurial thinking and acting in my opinion.
Of course the environment in which we were helped a lot. As a company we try to live agility, empowerment, taking decisions on the source, trust & psychological safety as the main basis of our management approach.
The fact that the program was for multiple locations was another significant complexity and cost factor. And there was just me, myself and one high potential colleague to support me in this journey.
It was never the plan to start with a full scale Lean tool implementation, this was one of our principles. We focused on the development of people rather than applying lean tools and executing lean projects – in fact we do not do any projects, this is the setup.
Another important focus was the creation of habits which we wanted to set up and practice. Routines & Rituals, a la Toyota Kata, to get familiar with a structured and systematic approach to daily improvement activities and problem solving.
Well, if your question is, how the hell we can implement Lean without e.g.: VSM, Kanban, Pull, ToC, Flow, SixSigma, TPM, etc. then I have the answer for you in my blog series, stay tuned for that.
YES we can very effectively become Lean with these first steps if you are patient and don’t expect the return already in the next 1-2 months.
To be continued…
Seref
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