Lean Leadership

Two more presentations from our last Lean Summit are now available on our YouTube channel. They shed a unique light on how two of the most successful manufacturers in the UK, GKN and Rolls-Royce, each with over a decade of experience in using lean thinking, are developing their lean leaders. They talk frankly about how they are tackling this key threshold to sustaining and accelerating their lean journeys.

Last year Peter Watkins, who leads the lean activities at GKN, presented one of the most dramatic examples of the power of compressing supply chains for next generation products. They unscrambled complex supply chains based on “focused factories” and “low-cost sourcing” to reduce total lead times from 90 weeks to 30 days - click here to view. This year Peter outlines how GKN is helping their leaders to change their behaviours as they learn how to develop the problem solving capabilities of their subordinates - click here to view. Brendan Hindle describes the Rolls-Royce lean journey and their Process Leadership Academy - click here to view. These are very important experiments from which we can learn a lot as we all embark the long journey to create our own lean leaders.

These talks build on the insights from John Shook about lean leadership at Toyota. These were summarised in his presentations to our Lean Summits in 2008 and 2011 which are worth viewing again. In them he talks about “leading as if you have no power” and what Toyota means when they say they “develop people before making cars”. Very significantly they change the focus of lean transformation from experts teaching lean tools in a classroom to line managers developing the problems solving capabilities of their staff. The new skills of mentoring and problem solving are only truly embedded through “learning-by-doing”.

Yours sincerely
Daniel T Jones
Chairman, Lean Enterprise Academy

If you are inspired by these videos why not join in the discussions at out latest Lean event, the LEA Community Sharing Day on Thursday 18th April 2013 in Cardiff. We have extended the deadline for abstracts until this Friday 22nd March 2013 if you would like to present and will continue to take bookings for attendees right up until the day itself but please note spaces are limited.

Hoshin and Oobeya

We have just posted two more presentations from our last Lean Summit on our YouTube channel addressing key challenges facing lean managers – how to focus activities on the vital few and how to improve the effectiveness of cross-functional projects.

The fact that most strategic plans are still built on a long list of projects shows how organisations struggle to deselect and focus.  Pascal Dennis and Tom Jackson have described the Hoshin planning tool to unlock this dilemma in their books, yet progress in using it has been slow. In his talk at the Lean Summit Laurie West describes how he learnt to use Hoshin in his own business and then to teach it to other executive teams in the automotive and engineering industries. He stresses the importance of the process a team goes through to define their priorities, not just the tool itself. We will take this further at our Sharing Day on April 18th in Cardiff when Mark Reich from LEI will describe the Hoshin process he was responsible for at Toyota North America.

In 2008 Takashi Tanaka has highlighted the power of using the Oobeya visual project management room to bring PDCA discipline to managing cross-functional projects. In 2010 Takashi and Sharon Tanner described how Boeing was taking Oobeya project management out of engineering and into the Executive Office. In 2011 Takashi described how Oobeya formed a key building block in Toyota’s management system. This year Takashi extends the story to create Digital Oobeya rooms to enable remote teams to work together across the world.

We have been very encouraged by the response to the Sharing Day on 18th April. Already several organisations with a long history of lean have indicated they will share their stories and questions. If you would like to share your stories please submit your proposed summary by Friday 15th March, for us to review and shape the day. Do join us for what looks like being a fascinating day.

Yours sincerely
Daniel T Jones
Chairman, Lean Enterprise Academy