Page 45 - MMI-March-April-2022

permanent closure. I began by Lean behavior. I did not think it
setting goals for myself, such as was necessary to set up a special
becoming the market leader, cut- Lean department and put them
ting costs by half, and empow- in charge of education and trans-
ering workers to be responsible formation. I made it everybody’s
for and in charge of production responsibility in their area of
without the intervention of work, taught by me initially and
management. To inculcate Lean later by my value stream man-
or JIT behavior in all, give new agers. This job was to be done
products protection for 8-10 every day on the Gemba and not
years, make competition re- from remote locations. We felt
dundant, develop new markets, happy with every achievement,
become India’s first actual Lean yet we were never satisfied as it
organization, etc. I had a timeline taught us more was possible.
in mind, but we were basically in In hindsight, we were lucky not
a hurry to outperform ourselves. to have had people telling us var-
With these guiding lights, I broke ious things to do. We followed
them down into daily Kaizen ac- JIT leads from Dr Schonberger’s
tivities on the Gemba in every book ‘World Class Manufactur- It is nec-
essary to
area – from marketing to prod- ing’, which incidentally is still a tell every
uct development to execution good book. The fact that I was member of
to supply chain. With all this able to put my words into action the team
work being done seamlessly and helped to build trust. My team about why
concurrently across all stages of saw me addressing concerns on you intend to
the value stream, I had given my all fronts – marketing, product become Lean
team five ‘zero’ goals even if they or process design, supplier devel- and how
were inordinate – zero delays opment, problem-solving, people you plan to
in deliveries, zero waste (defect development, creating a happy, proceed on
included), zero lead time, zero trustworthy environment, etc. this journey.
the results will follow. The CEO inventory, and zero accidents to I was always talking to them The goal of
Lean is not
himself must speak to the work- facilitate all goals. about the next goal and its ben- to reduce
ers and staff to set the goals and efits. My experience shows that the head-
lead them in Kaizen. Lean department or not? one can transform without a count, so it
When my Lean journey started, My focus was on developing ev- special department or group be- is import-
we faced many problems. One ery person into a leader (how- ing set up for the purpose. ant to tell
of them was that there were no ever unreasonable or over-am- them that to
orders despite having good prod- bitious that might sound). This Social and passion vs. alleviate any
ucts. This led to a temporary clo- meant everyone had to learn mechanistic and intellect fears of re-
sure, necessitating a turnaround and master all aspects of Lean Building a Lean culture is not a trenchment.
strategy to avoid an extended or by imbibing and adapting to mechanistic thing. It’s not that
you can randomly cherry-pick
some tools that will build you
a Lean culture. It is more of a
social thing, one that is part of
people’s development and trans-
formation, one that teaches in-
volvement, ownership, and re-
sponsible behavior. Passion, not
intellect, is the driver for success
here. Intellect here is useful in
Kaizen and standardization, but
Source: Magic Wand Media Passion motivates involvement,
success will come out of passion.

intellect encourages delegation,
and delegation, in the begin-
ning, is ruinous for success.

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