LEANING TOWARDS LEAN MANAGEMENT?

Lean enthusiasts often overlook the difference between perspective and performance. In their zeal to control the traffic (remove bottlenecks) they don’t recognise the imperative connections between traffic point duty (on site observations according to procedures) and control room perspective (overall strategy and implementation).

Lean management allows little margin for error or constrained resources such as labour shortage, equipment failure, supply chain interruption, changes to customer requirements (ramped up contracts). Contingency allowances for errors or resources are threadbare, or non-existent.

Inventory is one of the major targets of Lean zeal but doesn’t take into account the inventory implications buried in standards such as AS9116 Notice of Change (NOC). AS9116 requires that customers and other interested parties must be notified of proposed design changes. The number and type of parts and services required and the time needed for customer approval could lead to delays in production. These delays could be accepted by the customer but delays could fracture the Lean structure across the organisation.

To complicate matters further AS9116 can be used alone or with AS9100D. AS9116 Terms and Definitions require that baseline configurations for the physical product and its performance requirements must be established and verified with the customer. All intervening NOC authorities down to the lowest supply chain provider must be identified. By the time everyone involved has contributed their expertise, and change control initiated, approved and implemented up and down the levels of authority, Lean could be distorted beyond repair.

With intelligent anticipation of bottlenecks and other impediments Lean management will work as intended.  It works best with a verified, stable quality system, such as Qualidoc.

You need to be lean to prepare for lean!