Lean Management Consulting: lean processes that hold up in daily operations

Lean management is a leadership and organisational approach that measures every activity by whether it creates value for the customer. Whatever creates no value counts as waste and is reduced or eliminated. Originally developed from the Toyota Production System, lean is now applied in manufacturing, administration, logistics and services. At its core are five principles: define value, identify the value stream, create flow, pull control and continuous improvement.

Lean, quite literally, means slim or without excess. What is meant is an organisation that works with as little waste as possible: little waiting, few inventories, little rework, few unnecessary journeys and coordination loops. Lean does not mean cutting staff or working faster. It means organising the work so that it flows without friction losses and employees can use their time for value-adding activities.

Imagine an order running through your plant. From order entry to delivery, perhaps three weeks pass, but the order is actually worked on for only a few hours. The rest of the time it sits: in in-trays, in front of machines, in interim storage. Lean management looks for exactly these idle times and their causes and eliminates them step by step. Added to this are simple tools such as order at the workplace (5S), visible key figures (shop floor management) and a fixed routine for solving problems (A3, PDCA).

The classic goals are shorter lead times, lower inventories, higher delivery reliability, better quality and lower cost per unit. Behind them is a second goal that is often forgotten: an organisation that recognises and solves problems itself, without waiting for instructions from above. A plant in which shift leaders discuss deviations at the board every day and initiate measures is the real result. The key figures follow from that.

In SMEs and mid-sized companies in particular the leverage is great, because the lines of communication are short. A decision by plant management is at the line the next day. It does not take a staff unit or a group-wide programme, but one or two people who understand lean and a management team that stays with it. In my projects, lead time reductions of up to 70 percent were possible because nobody had previously looked at idle times and interfaces systematically. For an SME this means: more orders with the same workforce, more reliable delivery dates, less tied-up capital.

Not with a wave of training for everyone, but with a clear starting point. First: measure maturity so that you know where you stand. Second: choose a pilot area with a visible problem, such as a line with a long lead time or an order processing team with many queries. Third: introduce value stream, 5S and a shop floor board there with the team and measure the results. Fourth: record standards, train internal lean champions and only then roll out to the next area. Management must visibly go along with this, otherwise it remains a project of the lean department.

Lean targets flow and waste: it makes processes faster and leaner. Six Sigma targets variation and defects: it makes processes more stable and uses statistics and the DMAIC cycle for that. In practice the two complement each other, which is why people often speak of Lean Six Sigma. For most mid-sized plants, lean is the more sensible starting point, because the biggest losses lie in idle times and interfaces, not in process variation. Six Sigma pays off when a stable process still produces too much scrap.

Three methods are enough to begin with: value stream mapping, to see where time is lost; 5S, to establish order and standards at the workplace; and shop floor management, so that deviations become visible and are dealt with every day. Kanban, SMED or TPM come in when the analysis shows that inventories, changeover times or machine breakdowns are the bottleneck. Which method comes first is decided by the value stream, not by the method catalogue.