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Lean Principles

Lean Objectives foundational to your Vision and Values for lean continuous improvement

Lean Principle # 1

Every Lean Implementation is an Invention

There is no such thing as 'cookie cutter' lean

You can't just "do over here what they did over there".

You can't just "hire someone who used to work at Toyota".

You can't just "buy some lean tools with online training", and then expect them to be used effectively.

(despite all of our efforts to try to come close to that ideal...)

Tools do not answer the question of "why", only the question of "how".

A guiding principle answers the question of "why".

When people understand why, they become empowered... to make good decisions.

~ Excerpts from the Shingo Model Handbook

b-wise

Lean Principle # 2

Don't Reinvent

Why re-invent?

Yes, Lean Principle # 1 is "Every Lean Implementation is an Invention"

but that doesn't mean that you want to start from a state of ignorance.

Start with field-proven Lean Systems

and then... make them your own

These Lean Principles are Common to any Lean Systems

As you continuously improve your own lean systems for your own unique organization and culture, make sure that your inventions always stay true to these 'True North' lean principles.

Lean Culture
Lean culture is the sum of individuals' habits. Especially lean leadership habits.

Lean Management Systems are systematic ways to shape those habits.
People Empowerment
Your management trusts your people. People are responsible for their own area - cleanliness, maintenance, organization… There is a flat organization structure with many self-directed teams. Everyone has continuous improvement responsibilities, and there are systems for daily coaching. Everyone understands the organization's strategic direction, and why their team's current Strategic Challenge is so important.

First thing to look for:
If your leaders have not yet established
job security,
then you do not have a Lean Culture.

Focus on both: Process and Results

Many MBA schools still teach 'Management By Objective' (MBO), which encourages managers to establish a goal, and then 'give your people the freedom' to reach that goal in their own creative way.

MBO is incompatible with Lean. If you're going to be a successful manager in a lean organization, then, yes, you will participate in choosing your team's next Strategic Challenge to support strategic direction, and yes, you will empower your people to come up with creative ways to make those goals happen, but you will be very interested and involved in the details of how they do it.

Focus on Flow
In a typical lean journey to lean transformation, people get their first exposure to their first lean tool or method because they are seeking to put out an urgent fire.

(Hopefully), they soon discover that the best ways to find and eliminate the 7 deadly types of waste almost always focus on lean flow.
Value Stream Management
Traditional organizations organize and manage in functional silos.
(Operations, Accounting, Maintenance, Purchasing, Engineering...)

Lean organizations organize and manage by focusing on the flow of value to the customer.

Value Stream Mapping
isn't even the most visible evidence of value stream management

Visual Management
If it's hidden, it can't be improved. One important lean principle is to use diverse tools and methods for Visual Management to make it as visible and obvious as possible — What is normal? Is there anything happening (real-time) that is abnormal?
Throughput — not Output
Lean systems are designed using pull systems to quickly produce to actual customer demand.

(rather than building to a forecast of projected possible customer demand)
Scientific Method
Every lean tool and system is a unique application of the Scientific Method of Problem Solving for different common challenges encountered on a typical lean journey.

Your lean objective
is throughput, not output

(Inventory that is sold,
not just produced)

Hansei

Managers don't just dictatorially command their people to "think better".

They provide tools, systems, and one-on-one coaching for Hansei Lean Thinking. (Systems for how to think better)

Quality Problems are Swarmed
When anyone identifies a quality problem, work is stopped, (so that no more defects are produced), and a team of people from many parts of the organization swarm to quickly identify and eliminate the root causes, and then to institute countermeasures to ensure that that never happens again.
Standard Work
If people just backslide into old habits, then why even try to improve?

In a lean organization, every routine process has standard work, and every manager and leader (even the CEO) devotes a percentage of their day to Leader Standard Work.

What's so wrong with backsliding into old habits?

There are more principles of lean

As you progress on your own lean journey toward lean transformation, you will discover additional lean objectives and ideals, but this is a pretty good list to bookmark and come back to... often.

Road map for a typical
Lean Transformation

ideals

Lean Principle # 3

Lean Ideals provide 'True North' direction

Lean Ideals are impossible...

That's why they're called ideals.

Their purpose is to provide 'True North' direction — toward which every member of your organization is commonly striving, and yet will never fully reach.

Lean Ideals are a vision...

If your organization has a written Vision Statement, it will undoubtedly include most of the following lean objectives and ideals that are common to every lean organization.

And if your organization does not yet have a Vision Statement, then you might save some time and just get started with these...

Your lean objective
is to eliminate
the 7 types of waste

Zero defects
- Deliver exactly what is needed
- Defect-free
Zero waste
- Produce without any of the 7 Deadly Types of Waste
- 100% value add
Zero safety accidents
- For workers, customers, and the surrounding environment
Instant delivery
- Deliver on demand: exactly when requested
- Produce with the shortest practical cycle time and lead time
- Ideal = unlimited capacity
Batch size 1
- Produce exactly the quantity requested, in the smallest batch size possible, ideally one at a time
Zero response time
- Immediately respond to problems, changes, and challenges, applying lean principles and scientific methods for root cause analysis and problem solving

targets

Lean Principle # 4

Manage to a Strategic Challenge

A Strategic Challenge is the link between PDCA and your Strategic Plan

Lean Principles and Ideals are too vague and distant to serve as useful guides for daily kaizen and PDCA Coaching Cycles.

Even your Strategic Plan or Annual Hoshin is too high-level to serve as a useful guide for daily process improvements.

A shorter-horizon 'Strategic Challenge' (established by your mid-level manager) provides a clear direction for what is needed from your team to support the other teams that will depend on you when you all reach the next resting place on your never-ending lean journey toward your never-changing lean principles.

Strategic Targets are the links between PDCA and your Strategic Plan

Criteria for a Strategic Challenge

Your mid-level manager needs to come up with a Strategic Challenge for your Value Stream and/or Department that meets the following criteria.

1. A compelling description of a desirable state

A process breakthrough that will bring competitive advantage

Condensed to a compelling short rallying cry to focus the team's attention and effort.

Examples:

Wouldn't it be great if we could...	Rally Cry
make any item the same day that it's ordered, and ship the next day	Ship tomorrow
get the results of any lab test back within 2 hours	Know today
completely eliminate safety accidents	No accidents

2. Far enough away to be a stretch

It can't be done with existing processes in their current conditions

3. Believable

Close enough to be within reach
(believably achievable within 3 to 30 months)

4. Clearly defined outcomes

Clearly defined measures and targets for process results that must (somehow) be achieved

The leader for each area of responsibility works with his or her coach
(at the next higher level)

to determine the capabilities needed from each value stream, value stream loop, department, process, and supporting function — in order to support the stretch goals of the next higher level

thereby uniting every effort at every level of the organization to pull together to support the highest level strategic plan.

5. Many options to reach those outcomes

Plenty of options for scientific experimentation for HOW to produce those desired outcomes

Puzzling enough that the details for how to reach those measures are not already obvious

If there is no 'unclear territory', then you have set your Strategic Targets too low

What's the point of conducting PDCA scientific experiments if you think you already know the answers?

Navigating unknown territory?

Use PDCA Coaching

How to choose your next Strategic Challenge

The most common way to identify potential strategic targets is to create Current State and Future State Value Stream Maps.

What does each value stream need to deliver?

What does each loop within each value stream need to deliver?

A "loop" is a section of a value stream

Start with Flow

As explained in our online training for What is a Lean Journey?

If you still have any value stream (or segment of a supporting value stream) that is not yet in a sustainable state of lean flow...

then there should be nothing strategic to think about.

The strategic challenge for that value stream (or segment) needs to start with Lean Flow

Why is flow so important?

See more training for how to choose a well-considered Next Target Condition

Reading

the Principles of Lean

Remember, whenever you don't immediately find what you're looking for,

you can browse the Systems2win Site Map

or use Google Site Search (in the upper right corner of every web page)

The Shingo Model

The Shingo Principles of Operational Excellence provide a comprehensive and well-thought-out summary of lean principles.

Source: Shingo Institute

You can download the Shingo Model Handbook and Poster at shingo.org/model

After you download your (free) handbook, you will want to set aside about an hour to read and thoroughly digest their:

Well-written explanations of each Lean Principle
Examples of Ideal Principle-Based Behaviors
Excellent explanation of the relationships between Lean Principles, Lean Systems, and Lean Tools

Tools do no answer the question of "why", only the question of "how".

A guiding principle answers the question of "why".

When people understand why, they become empowered... to make good decisions.

~ Excerpts from the Shingo Model Handbook

More Lean Principles

A frequently cited reference for Lean Principles is Jeffrey Liker's book, The Toyota Way.

When you search for 'Lean Principles' within The Lean Enterprise Institute, (lean.org), you will find their 5 Steps of Lean as well as an interesting article about early sources of lean principles (pre-dating Toyota).

Lean Manufacturing Principles

What's the difference between Lean Principles
and Lean Manufacturing Principles?

Nothing.

It doesn't matter whether the process that you are improving is for lean healthcare, or lean office, or lean service, or lean government...

Lean principles, objectives, and ideals remain the same.

Learn more about Lean Manufacturing Principles

rules

The Toyota 4 Rules In Use

In their paper Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System, Harvard Business Review, 1999, Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen boiled down the essence of all lean systems to these Lean 4 Rules In Use: