No, I personally don’t need any respect, but lean manufacturing does. Respect for people that is. The other pillar of lean that it seems everyone has a habit of forgetting or even ignoring. Once you really start to learn about and experience that pillar you realize how real lean simply can’t function without it… and descriptions of lean that focus purely on the waste and value aspects seem empty.
For example, take this article on lean in the construction industry that appeared just today. We like reading about applications of lean to non-manufacturing organizations and industries, so such articles are usually exciting. But let’s take a closer look.
“Lean thinking is no more or less than eliminating waste from business processes and focusing on generating value,” he [Philip Kirby] told a workshop at the Ontario General Contractors Association’s 4th annual construction symposium.
The article goes on to describe "multi-pronged approaches" to eliminating waste, adding value, synchronizing activities, reconfiguring processes, and the like. There are even some odd comments like "Lean thinking combines the best elements of craft production with mass production."
But nothing about people. Nothing about respect for people. As our friend Mark Graban at the Lean Blog likes to say, this isn’t lean, it’s LAME… Lean as Misguidedly Executed.
Without respect for people, there can be no real lean.
Mark Graban says
I just thought of a new one, it might also be Lean As Misguidedly Explained! Had another case of that from Industry Week on my blog yesterday.
Billy Tucker says
I am in a company that Phillip Kirby’s OTI is supposedly helping. The consultants he sent to our company were not very people friendly (to put it nicely). The biggest problem at our company was not the product being produced, but poor management in the front office that was more concerned with fixing what was supposedly wrong with what the workers were doing, when in fact, the management is the problem. They spend more time trumpetting the praises of lean manufacturing to head office than actually performing any lean operations or functions. As for OTI they are the best bullshitters money can buy. Meanwhile our shop is floundering in a sea of red tape, yes-men, and kanban cards. I hope we don’t lose many more employees or what is left of us will be standing in the unemployment line looking for new jobs.