The Crisis of Lean

I read a lot of blogs about lean. One I just discovered today is Fashion-Incubator: Lessons from the Sustainable Factory Floor.

Talk about a surprising application of lean philosophy. I never would have imagined lean on the fashion floor room could be so fascinating, or well written.

Congratulations go to Kathleen, especially for her piece on The Crisis of Kaizen.

She applies a kaizen philosophy to redesign a jacket and makes life easier and work more efficient for the stitchers at her factory.

Her new design is faster, more customizable, and much cheaper to produce. Kathleen effectively reduces waste and lowers production costs. But, is this always a good thing?

Suddenly "because things could be done better and more quickly than before, people were left without work to do," something management saw as a problem. Oftentimes, this can lead to shortsighted managers laying people off, perpetuating the myth that Lean leads to firings.

This doesn't have to be the case! Lean manufacturing is about improving efficiency - if there is no work to do, examine your manufacturing flow. A new kanban, or the redistribution of work tasks, can often increase profits even further!
Fortunately, this is what happened in Kathleen's case, where management redesigned their JIT system to accommodate the increased efficiency - pushing profits even higher.

The fear of firings when things become more "efficient," a misplaced notion of waste reduction, hurts lean. It prevents full commitment from workers and management.

Don't let lean fail from fear.
State from the beginning that the goal isn't to reduce staff, but to increase productivity.

Lean doesn't have to be mean.