{"id":152,"date":"2019-07-12T09:17:14","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T09:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/?p=152"},"modified":"2019-07-12T09:21:05","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T09:21:05","slug":"time-to-say-adieu-to-agile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/time-to-say-adieu-to-agile\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to say Adieu to Agile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Andy Lahy, Global Head of Logistics Strategy and Innovation at Panalpina.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, our apologies to\nthose of you out there that are strong advocates of Lean, Agile, Six Sigma,\nShingo or any other approach that promises to bring continuous improvement or a\nnew culture or transformation to your business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please excuse our cynicism, but\nwe\u00b4ve seen enough articles on Linkedin about how Lean is a philosophy and not a\ntool-kit, how Agile promises to improve businesses where Lean has failed, and\nhow Six Sigma, if only it was done correctly and embraced by senior managers,\nwould transform the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it is estimated that 74% of lean programmes are not successful<\/a> and that the UK alone wasted \u00a337billion on failed Agile projects in one year<\/a>, isn’t it time that we stopped asking if Lean or Agile is being done correctly, and instead ask if any one of these approaches is right at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We call for an end to\nthe debate about the<\/em> right approach to\ncontinuous improvement. Instead, let us seek to understand the fundamentals of how\npeople work together to make things better. It is this understanding that\nreally sits at the heart of any journey towards operational excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our view is that humans have a natural ability to work together to improve things. In fact, one could argue that working together and improving things is in our DNA. Our world as we know it wouldn\u00b4t be here if this weren\u2019t the case, and we are pretty sure it wasn\u00b4t all down to Lean or Agile! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Source: Maria Pia Caraccia, global head of operational excellence at Panalpina, Logistics and Manufacturing <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The ideas in this short\narticle are based on research carried out by the Panalpina Centre for\nManufacturing and Logistics Research (PARC<\/a>) at Cardiff University, some of which was recently\npublished in a paper in the Journal of Total Quality Management & Business\nExcellence, entitled \u201cTowards a theory of operational\nexcellence\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core of our argument is that there\nare more similarities between the many popular approaches such as Lean, Agile, Six\nSigma and Shingo, than there are differences, and that any business that\nblindly sticks to one approach will restrict rather than enable continuous\nimprovement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on the ideas of Dahlgaard\nand Dahlgaard-Park (1999), operational excellence is about <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. developing\nexcellent people, who are able to <\/li>
  2. create\nexcellent partnerships with customers, suppliers and wider society, to <\/li>
  3. deliver\nexcellent products or services that <\/li>
  4. delight\ncustomers. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    There are clearly multiple ways this can be done. For some, the answer is to look to introduce a \u201clean approach\u201d or to implement an \u201cagile approach\u201d, or for those that prefer to sit on the fence, the \u201cle-agile approach\u201d is needed. But, in line with the ideas of Professor Mike Wilson, global head of Logistics and Manufacturing at Panalpina, continuous improvement and operational excellence are simply all about winning the hearts and minds of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/WGxXOkdIXZI\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The question to be answered by businesses therefore, is not what is the<\/em> right continuous improvement approach, but instead, how can we create an approach that enables and engages everyone in the business to want to work together to make improvements?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So, if we advise against using Lean,\nAgile, Six -Sigma, Shingo or any other off the shelf approaches to do this, what\ndo we recommend exactly to create a culture of continuous improvement? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Simply, we recommend to start by asking\nyourself what you want to achieve, who the involved people are, both in terms\nof who will be affected by the change and who will need to work together to make\nthe change. Only when you have this, explore different elements of the existing\napproaches and select the most appropriate elements from each and bring them\ntogether to create an approach that is right for you and the people involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is exactly the approach we used at Panalpina, when we developed our approach to operational excellence. We worked with employees from across the business to take the best from the different approaches, mixed them in with ideas developed by our own team, and created LogEx<\/a>, an approach that works for us and our customers. Eight years on<\/a>, LogEx is still going strong and we continue to improve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In short, if you want to create a\nculture of continuous improvement, don\u00b4t start by selecting any single approach\nand blindly try to apply it. Use a pick and mix approach and continuously\nimprove your own continuous improvement approach. To paraphrase Shakespeare\u2019s\nJuliet, an improvement approach by any name, will work just as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lean, agile and all the other methodologies are just that; methodologies. And they don\u2019t work for everyone. In this PARC Insight Andy Lahy, Global Head of Logistics Strategy and Innovation at Panalpina, explains why organisations might want to reconsider their approach to Continuous Improvement by going freestyle and developing a unique solution that best suits their business.","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[18,17,19],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lean","tag-agile","tag-lean","tag-six-sigma"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/logistics-manufacturing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}