{"id":293,"date":"2020-04-26T09:06:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T09:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/?p=293"},"modified":"2024-09-08T17:15:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-08T17:15:21","slug":"5-counter-intuitive-elements-of-lean-or-lean-is-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/5-counter-intuitive-elements-of-lean-or-lean-is-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Counter Intuitive Elements of Lean"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(or Lean is Weird)<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Relatively early in the lockdown, when the usually ever-bountiful supermarkets were ransacked by worried shoppers, leaving aisle upon aisle of bare shelves, criticisms of lean began to materialise. \u2018Just-in-time is to blame’, \u2018supermarkets don\u2019t hold any stock anymore so they can save money\u2019, \u2018supplies are delivered \u2018little and often\u2019, the inference being that such practices leave us very vulnerable to shocks and times of crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Which is absolutely correct. What a lean thinker would ask people to think about is \u2018how feasible is it to always hold as much food as we need to survive a global pandemic triggered lockdown?\u2019 and \u2018how much waste would be there be every week?’ It\u2019s not as if supermarkets had cracked \u2018zero waste\u2019 before the Covid-19 crisis happened anyway.\u00a0\u00a0Plus, they are under an amazing amount of pressure to deliver \u2018value for money\u2019 for customers so it is only natural that they will pursue practices that aim to reduce cost and minimising stock levels, where levels are aligned to demand, to achieve this.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lean is full of ideals that can manifest themselves imperfectly within a range of different scenarios. When the usual \u2018once every 3 years\u2019 purchase of plain flour is suddenly, and without warning, quickly replaced by \u2018it\u2019ll use up an hour or two and I always fancied giving it a go\u2019 bread baking aspirations of the masses \u2013 it\u2019s far too much for lean to deal with. Most supermarkets work on supply chain replenishment principles as described, borne from the fourth lean principle, that of \u2018PULL\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Pull asks lean organisations to make what has only been bought or ordered.\u00a0\u00a0If this was perfectly achieved it would produce a zero waste environment, but when it comes to all of the many different products that supermarkets stock, basing everything on pull simply wouldn\u2019t be practical. How could you cope with the demand for barbecue food on a sunny weekend if you were relying on stocking levels based on the rainy weekend previous? With or without a global pandemic. So, the truth is that no lean principle can ever be completely achieved.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Indeed, some lean principles should be actively fought against in order to make organisational sense. The best example I can think of here is the lean ideal of \u2018one piece flow\u2019 which asks us to focus on making things one at a time as this ensures the shortest possible lead time for the delivery of that one product, zero waste and the best chance for complete quality. However, what does this mean for making cornflakes for example? For making aspirin? Making one box of aspirin, one box of cornflakes at a time? It would make no economic sense because economies of scale are real.\u00a0I have written more on this here.<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So lean is a funny thing \u2013 it can never be purely achieved and sometimes needs to be overridden. It\u2019s often called \u2018common sense\u2019, yet there are lots of counterintuitive elements and things that need to be \u2018uncovered\u2019 or \u2018taught\u2019. Over the years, I\u2019ve developed a list of the ones that interest me the most and I thought I\u2019d share them with you now, to give an insight into lean\u2019s strangeness.\u00a0\u00a0So whilst we\u2019ve been discussing it,\u00a0\u00a0let\u2019s start with Pull \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lean Counterintuitives\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

1. Pull or\u00a0right to left thinking<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In order to improve, lean asks us to think about everything that is happening as we track backwards from purchase.\u00a0\u00a0Humans go forward. They start at the beginning and move towards the end. That\u2019s just what we do, how we live each day, each year of our lives. Lean asks us to think about what needs to be achieved and work backwards from that point to achieve it, reducing the amount of time it takes to do so. This does not come naturally to us AT ALL. Time stretches out before us usually.\u00a0\u00a0Looking backwards is uncomfortable and we resist, yet how powerful a mechanism of investigation it is in order to move forward more positively as it helps us to focus on the things that are truly important.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

2. To get quicker at doing things, you have to become obsessed with quality<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Working faster often means that you might lose some of the quality of what you do, a clumsily written sentence, a poorly cut hem and so when we talk about lean being a methodology that looks to reduce end to end lead times, it would be easy to think that we are prepared to do so at the expense of quality.\u00a0\u00a0That we were happy with shortcuts. The reverse is true however. The ONLY way that you can become faster is to become\u00a0obsessed\u00a0<\/strong>with quality. Indeed, the \u2018andon\u2019 concept of calling for help, even sometimes stopping the line, in order to problem solve and put failsafe prevention mechanisms in place, can be said to be slowing things down so as to ultimately, get faster. So yes, to get quicker, you need to slow down and think about the quality of your work. If you produce poor quality, you\u2019ll lose your customers<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In a similar vein, sometimes to become quicker at delivering products or services to customers,\u00a0\u00a0you need to increase the amount of work that operators do leading us to ….<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

3.<\/strong> Reducing lead times might mean that workers have to do more work<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There\u2019s a kind of misnomer out there that lean is all \u2018cut, cut, cut\u2019 when actually, sometimes we ask employees to do MORE to deliver a better service to customers. I talk about my 12 week maternity scan to explain this. After checking into reception I saw 4 different people. 1 to check my urine, 1 to weigh me, 1 to scan me and 1 consultant.\u00a0\u00a0The whole process took 2 and a half hours to complete as I queued for each part of the process. As I sat patiently to move to each stage in the waiting room, I could see a variety of medical staff looking for patients, looking for files. What would have been a better experience for me, and one that was ultimately more efficient, would be for the scanning team to scan me and also check my urine, note down my weight at the same time. Better for me, but more work for those individuals. The same principle can be applied in many different work scenarios, if the worker takes on a little bit more, the customer will often have a better experience. The problem is though that…<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

4. Humans like batching not \u2018one piece flow\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We prefer focusing on one task and doing it over and over again. \u2018I\u2019m doing urine tests this morning\u2019\u2026 \u2018I\u2019ll let all of these registration forms collect for a while and I\u2019ll blitz them all one Friday afternoon’.\u00a0\u00a0This is because we feel more comfortable once in the rhythm of task than chopping and changing our head and our hands to do different things. The truth is that it is quicker\u00a0FOR US\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>to work in a batch, we get faster and faster as we click into the groove, but we forget about the poor customer who is waiting those 2 weeks until we manage to get into our \u2018I must blitz inputting those registration forms\u2019 mindset.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

5. The more inventory there is, the longer the lead time<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Something that I still get my head twizzled about is the fact that the more inventory or stock that exists in the system, the longer the lead time experience for every product or service within that system.\u00a0\u00a0To bring us back to the beginning of the article, if you have a supermarket system that is full enough to deal with a global pandemic, food will have been loitering waiting to be used within that system for a very long time – not a great idea when food is perishable!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So yes, lean can be weird because there are many conditions and \u2018yes buts\u2019 and \u2018if this then this but if that then the other\u2019.. that\u2019s why understanding that lean primarily is about delighting customers, reducing lead time and\/or maximising value and a scientific approach to work is essential. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Once you’ve grasped those three overriding principles, you can then start thinking and understanding all of the myriad of concepts that comprise the application of lean (one piece flow, standard work, just in time etc. etc.) which you will inevitably have to adapt. Most crucially, as long as you reflect, experiment and learn \u00e0 la\u00a0PDCA, you will always be on the path of improvement<\/a>, so lean will always be win win.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(or Lean is Weird) Relatively early in the lockdown, when the usually ever-bountiful supermarkets were ransacked by worried shoppers, leaving aisle upon aisle of bare shelves, criticisms of lean began […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":1013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lean","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2020\/04\/weird-dog.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":958,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}