Working with you ...
Our Action Research involves working with organisations at different stages of their lean journey but we are keen to work with pioneers to develop new ways of defining value from the customer’s perspective - in healthcare, mobility and other service sectors ...
If you are interested in training, mentoring or need help with your lean transformation or business model - or would just like us to make a presentation to senior management please send us an email outlining your situation and the problem you want us to help solve – to info@leanuk.org.
The Role of the Lean Enterprise Academy
Lean Thinking is a management system pioneered by Toyota, engaging every employee in streamlining the horizontal processes that create value for consumers...
It is about doing more with existing resources - a win-win-win-win for consumers, employees, shareholders and society. Our contention is that lean management will replace the traditional functional management model.
Daniel Jones and James Womack described the core principles of lean thinking in their books The Machine that Changed the World, Lean Thinking and Lean Solutions. Since then our mission has been to write down the fundamental building blocks for creating lean value streams in do-it-yourself workbooks - beginning with Learning to See - and in management handbooks including Getting the Right Things Done.
LEA has for several years been exploring the application of lean with pioneering organizations beyond the auto industry, including retailing and consumer goods, distribution and supply chains, construction, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, services, the public sector and healthcare.
Daniel Jones was the Principal of Unipart U - the first company university in the UK to develop lean across the whole Unipart Group of distribution and manufacturing businesses. He was also one of the authors of the UK Government’s Rethinking Construction report which introduced lean to the construction industry. He also advised Tesco on the application of lean in their retailing and supply chain operations and is an advisor to the European Efficient Consumer Response movement. LEA is currently helping several organizations to develop their lean transformation programmes, including Portsmouth NHS Trust.
LEA is a founding affiliate of the Lean Global Network, made up of 17 non-profit education and research organizations in Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the USA and the UK, all dedicated to building a capability to deliver knowledge of lean in each major economy across the globe.
Designing Lean Transformations
Recently we have been asked to help design and support lean transformations in several organisations. Our interest in getting involved in these longer term projects is to learn how an organisation can most effectively develop their own lean transformations. This includes diagnosing the business problems or gaps in performance to be closed, framing an A3 plan of action for the organisation, developing the lean knowledge of top managers, initiating several value stream pilot projects, developing a cadre of lean line managers to build on these pilot projects, and creating internal lean experts to support them.
We can only work with a few organisations at a time on these longer term projects although we can draw on a network of lean experts from around the world. We are particularly interested in working with organisations in very diverse industries and at different stages of lean in order to be able to extract the generic lessons to be learnt from these different transformations. In some cases, but not all, these longer term projects have grown out of several in-house workshops we have done in different parts of the organisation or to unblock different stages of their lean transformations.
Lean Strategy Meetings
To understand how Lean Thinking would work in your organisation The Lean Enterprise Academy offer executive Lean Strategy Meetings to brainstorm the key areas of opportunity and explore the possible courses of action.
Please call the office on 01600 650822 or email info@leanuk.org to explore how we can help you.
Different approaches ...
We found that different approaches are necessary to break the prevailing mind set in different circumstances. Establishing basic stability is the right starting point in machining and assembly and establishing a common rhythm is the key in warehousing and distribution. In process industries with a large product mix Ian Glenday discovered the key is to separate the few high volume products from the many low volume products. He describes this in our first workbook Breaking Through to Flow and runs breakthrough workshops in many different environments.
Developing new lean business models
One of the most significant results of lean is that it opens up new business models or new ways of delivering value to customers that was previously impossible or too expensive. We outlined new ways of understanding how consumers use products and services to solve problems in managing their households in Lean Solutions. We are always looking for organisations that are interested in exploring how they might rethink what they offer and how to their consumers.
Using the Right Tools
The skill of the lean thinker is to help employees to use the right tools in the right places in the right sequence to achieve the desired improvements in value stream performance. These value streams have to be aligned within a policy management process and continually improved by developing the problem solving capabilities of employees using A3 thinking.
For Lasting Results
Recently we have been working with several organisations to help them design and implement enterprise wide lean transformations. Our research experience tells us the only results that last are those done by employees themselves. Senseis and consultants can help to learn lean but it is an illusion to think they can do it for you. Lean progress lasts if it is led by managers who have clearly defined the business problem that needs to be solved, who have learnt how lean can help to solve that problem and who are able to develop a plan of action they will lead and follow up on.
The Next Steps ...
We are currently looking for pioneering organisations willing to work with us to develop new ways of defining value from the customer’s perspective - in healthcare, financial services, communications, mobility, personal logistics and shelter. This entails finding new ways of helping consumers manage their consumption processes, developing a two-way dialogue with them and designing new processes to deliver value and ultimately new business models delivering Lean Solutions.