Lean Should Lead to Growth
As anyone who's ever tried to lose weight knows, getting lean is one thing. Staying lean over the long haul is another thing - and a much more difficult challenge altogether. Overtime, it's all too easy to slip into bad habits and old ruts, even after you've worked hard to shed pounds and live a healthier lifestyle. The same concept is true for companies that have applied Lean Enterprise ideas and techniques to their operations.
By now, many, if not not most people in the manufacturing sector know that Lean offers a powerful way to increase capacity, cut lead times, minimize waste, and maximize efficiency. At the same time, however, a lot of people may not realize that Lean can work for virtually any process-oriented organization - manufacturers, government agencies, health care organizations, financial institutions, and others. Why? Lean focuses on making continual improvements to business processes. Those improvements can lead to growth. Any company or organization can benefit from that.
As with many things in life, however, there's a tendency for people to look for the magic bullet. They think they can embrace a Lean initiative once, and that by doing so, their company's challenges will be solved. It doesn't work like that. The keyword to emphasize with Lean is "continuous." It's all about the practice of making step-by-step, incremental improvements to a process or system. In that sense, a Lean initiative is never really "finished" - you're always looking forways to continually improve. To do Lean correctly, you need to set measurable goals at the start. Once you meet those goals, you reset them , reestablish your benchmarks, and you continue the process.
In this issue's "Ones to Watch" feature, we take a close look at five Minnesota companies and business leaders who have taken that approach to heart. They've all found success by embracing change, seeking out new opportunities, empowering their employees, and continually looking for new ways to improve their processes and systems.
Another item to check out is "The Year in Tech"; it offers an always insightful take on the best and brightest people, companies, and innovations on Minnesota's manufacturing and technology scene over the last year. And don't miss the second partof our feature on the state's changing workforce ("Weathering the Storm"). In the last issue, we examined factors driving the changes; here, we explore strategies you can use to address them.
I hope you like what you see here. I'd certainly appreciate your thoughts and comments, soplease feel free to e-mail meat any time. Thanks!
Bob Kill
President