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Dan Jones: Creating a Kaizen Culture By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Monday, July 26, 2010

In my experience a Kaizen culture is set by example, is enabled using a common method and language and is nurtured by recognising achievements, telling stories and building upon the resulting learning. In 1993 I was fortunate to be involved in creating what is still one of the best examples of a Kaizen culture at the Unipart Group of companies in the UK, who make and distribute automotive components. From the beginning the initiative has been led by the Chief Executive, who teaches regularly in the company university, reviews progress on the shop floor of their many operations and attends ...

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Dan Jones: Convincing Executives to go Lean By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Friday, June 11, 2010

The best way to answer this question is to summarise two contrasting real stories – one that got it and one that still does not – at different ends of the same sector. The successful case began with a question from a senior Director – “How could these lean Toyota ideas help my business?”  “Let’s take a walk and see” was my answer. As we walked it because clear there was waste everywhere. This very quickly led to a meeting with the CEO who was intrigued and gave us the go ahead to begin some experiments to demonstrate the potential scale ...

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Dan Jones: Lean Insights before Lean Innovation By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I have always thought that innovation rather than simply quality, delivery and cost was the real purpose and ultimate result of lean thinking; innovation in terms of the products and services we design, in how we relate to customers and in how we find new ways of working together to create value. The experience with lean is that it leads to new capabilities which in turn open up new business models that turn the tables on the competition and reshape whole industries. In other words lean insights can lead to lean innovations. There is no short cut. Think of it this ...

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Dan Jones: Lean, Quality and Cost Cutting By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Thursday, April 22, 2010

I have met many of these folks too who talk about lean but whose heads are stuck in the old cost cutting mind set. Organisations that employ them, whether as internal or external consultants, deserve what they get – traditional cost cutting! A great shame and a missed opportunity. On the other hand I have also met good lean folk who know all the tools but who do not have an A3 plan to guide their actions. And I often encounter quality folks who imply that improving quality is somehow more virtuous than the grubby task of eliminating waste, which ...

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Dan Jones: Essential Lean and Six Sigma By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Saturday, April 10, 2010

The fundamental power of the ideas behind Lean and Six Sigma are too important to be lost sight of as the improvement movements that champion them compete for attention. These ideas came together in a unique synthesis at Toyota in the 1960s as it was developing its business system. In my view they need to come together again as the rest of the world strives to realize their potential. What the Quality movement, of which Six Sigma is the latest incarnation, brought us is the idea that this is how we can use the scientific method to solve social as well ...

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Dan Jones: The Laws of Lean Organisations By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Monday, March 15, 2010

It is not too far-fetched to think of lean as the science of getting useful work out of an organisation. But in this case the organisation does not exist in isolation – it has to serve its customers, work with its partners (employees, suppliers, distributors, shareholders etc) and find its place in the physical, economic and social environment in which it operates. This changes over time and so the laws of lean organisations will also change as societies face new challenges in the future. This is how I would summarise the “laws of lean”. The first lean law states that the ...

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Dan Jones: Lean Service Delivery By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Saturday, February 27, 2010

Taiichi Ohno is reported to have said that the shop floor is a reflection of management. In my experience this is so true. Unless management can articulate a convincing case to change it is easy to get stuck in fire-fighting mode. Good people trapped in a broken process without a clear purpose will never improve. Well intentioned efforts to change the culture or even to redesign processes will run into the sand if the purpose or the performance gaps that need to be closed and the financial consequences of doing so are not clear. This means management seeing lean not just ...

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Dan Jones: Learning beyond Toyota By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Monday, February 8, 2010

Toyota’s impressive growth to become the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world undoubtedly gave the lean movement its unique strength. Organisations who try to follow Toyota’s example only have themselves to blame if they cannot make similar progress. They cannot claim that lean does not work, only that they have not yet fully understood what it entails. But Toyota’s example also means that the lean movement, unlike almost every other movement, was driven by practice and not theory. Indeed it was well over twenty years after the Toyota Production System was codified that Jim Womack and I described the theory and ...

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Dan Jones: Goals and means to achieve superior performance By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Monday, January 11, 2010

Goals and means have to go together. Either one without the other does not lead to lasting improvements. To do this managers need to work together to dig down to the underlying root causes of the often vaguely defined performance gaps facing the organisation. Understanding these root causes helps everyone to focus on closing the vital few gaps that will make the biggest difference to the organisation, its customers and its employees. At which point someone can be given the responsibility for gaining agreement across the organisation using the evidence based, scientific method to implement and test the right countermeasures ...

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Dan Jones: Lean has to be “win-win-win” By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Wednesday, January 6, 2010

There is no doubt that employees very much prefer to work in a lean organisation. When you hear them say “we would never want to go back to the old ways” you know that at least this part of the organisation is serious about lean. If lean is misused as a fig leaf for crude cost cutting you know it will go backwards in a hurry – it is difficult to misuse lean for long. But that does not mean that employee involvement is all there is to lean – or that it is all plain sailing – far from it. ...

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