Lean Times Require Lean Measures

When is a good time to implement lean?  If times are bad and you’re in a recession you need to get lean now in order to handle the increased work resulting from internal layoffs.   But Lean as a strategy also means being more efficient when times are good in order to increase your competitive advantage.  When can you stop becoming lean?

Lean helps an organization release unnecessary capacity, we call this waste.  Just like a diet program is designed to reduce fat from your body.  Fat is just extra calories or stored energy your body is not using.  This is also wasted energy.  In business this wasted energy has many forms: inventory, rework, defects, inspection, overproduction, unnecessary motion, delays, overprocessing, and unnecessary transportation.  Lean thinking is like a diet program designed to eliminate this waste.

In bad times you may be forced to do less and as a result you can use lean to adjust to the recession.  But it’s the good times that are more likely to cause your business to gain weight.  When times are good it is just too easy to add people, begin unnecessary work, build inventory, and absorb unnecessary transportation.  It is exactly the good times that implementing lean production methods is needed even more.

So in bad times you need to implement lean to survive the recession, in good times you need a lean competitive advantage.  When can you stop becoming lean?  I believe your business can always use lean.  Just like a diet program requires you to change your eating habits, forever, you can never stop being lean either.

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Posted by Chris Anderson on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 under Business Improvement Services, Strategy