Comments on Lean Blog: Reader Question: Model Lines

Pascal Dennis' recent book Getting the Right Thing...

2008-03-13T18:58:00.000-05:00

Pascal Dennis' recent book Getting the Right Things Done provides a great roadmap for "going through the PDCA process" as Mark suggests. The sustaining piece is covered in the later parts of the book in the check, problem solve, adjust phases.

We've had lots of people read it and do what Pascal suggests, and the results are impressive. The key is to start working on and getting success against your biggest problems. That will fuel your next project, and is also a good way to involve senior leaders because they are the ones that want the biggest problems solved the most...

Mike brings up another interesting point which as ...

2008-03-12T17:41:00.000-05:00

Mike brings up another interesting point which as you plan your efforts, pre-plan points of reflection. This means where you will pause and take stock of where you are, what's working, what's not and where you need to head. This will prevent things from drifting slowly and unplanned from one focus to another. It might still shift, but you will do so purposefully. Good luck.

Our corporate Lean leadership had the same mantra,...

2008-03-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Our corporate Lean leadership had the same mantra, "inch-wide, mile-deep". However, the journey seemed to shift to an "inch deep, mile wide". We were not digging deeper into Lean at our initial facilities, as we were attempting to facilitate Lean in too many other areas of the organization. This has been a topic of discussion recently. We've suffered in our implementation, as our Lean leadership was spread too thin.

Stick with Jamie's theory and DO NOT become inch-deep, mile-wide. Have a 'pilot' or 'learning' area (or more, depending on the size of your organization) and always strive to keep that/those areas ahead of everyone else. Then bring everyone there to learn, hands-on.

Splendid. Excellent post, realy helpful. Thank you...

2008-03-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

Splendid. Excellent post, realy helpful. Thank you!

During the early days of the Chrysler Operating Sy...

2008-03-11T07:36:00.000-05:00

During the early days of the Chrysler Operating System about 15 years ago, we developed some of the more serious and early work on "model lines." We called them Lean Learning Lines. We've continued over the many years developing that practice through many experiments and lessons learned and now call it a Lean Learning Laboratory. There are many versions of model lines. I've been in several companies where Toyota even visited to develop a model line and the group was wondering "what line was that anyway?" because the practice had disappeared.

What we've learned, and the mistakes we've made, could fill up a whole other blog, so I can barely begin to answer in the comments section.

There is a lot of thought behind the phrase Lean Learning Laboratory. To build a model line may only be to provide an example to people. But "Learning" means this model area is focus on generating the learning, both on the skills and tools of lean but also the leadership and transformation issues. It is also a place to experiment as a "Laboratory" which means you're going to try things, AND FAIL, to figure out how lean will work best whether it's how to work with your processes, your shift structure, your organizational structure or any one of a 100 things that might make lean hard.

A last note: how you transfer knowledge from one area to the rest of the organization is vital. Do not complete your model area and then say "OK, how do we learn from this?" You must pre-plan your learning. The people in the model area have a customer - it is everyone else. How they document their learnings, how they structure the experiments and who and how they engage others will be different if the rest of the organization is their customer of learning instead of only a barrier that holds them back from success.

I believe this strategy, what I like to call and "inch-wide, mile-deep" is a great investment for a lean journey. But it should be looked at as exactly that, an investment.