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The Society for Manufacturing Engineers puts out a noteworthy “lean directions” newsletter from time to time and there are many interesting columns to be found there.

In this column, though, I take issue with the initial question posed:

“Knowing that lean makes so much sense, and that the fundamental principles of lean are so intuitively the right thing to do, why does lean work in some organizations and not in others?”

From my experience, I don’t think that lean principles are always initially intuitive to people. I think to instances where production teams think it’s intuitive that batches are always more efficient, to times when operators questioned the idea of standard work by saying “well different people do things differently”, etc. I think I’m recalling a Jim Womack & Daniel Jones story about asking a child to help stuff and mail envelopes and the child “intuitively” set it up as a batch process!

So, I understand cases where lean understanding is there, but “anchors” prevent or slow implementation for one of many reasons. But, sometimes the challenge is that people don’t yet internalize lean concepts that might seem “so obvious” to a person who has seen lean in action. Do we sometimes think that people should “see it” after a single training session? What do you see in your lean experience?

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.