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Vol 32 - No 03 - May 2006 Editorial: Letter to the Editor Dear Malcolm, I have just read Tim Franklin's very interesting Philippic (Vol 32, Number 1) in which he discusses what are in his opinion, some of the reasons why the theoretical benefits of lean manufacturing clearly remain elusive for most companies. He has clearly identified what he calls cultural issues to do with organisational subcultures, which he then goes on to further define as the tendency for departments to prioritise in terms of their primary function. What price does Continuous Improvement mean to a sales team if it actually costs them orders for a variety of reasons? Two of which could be, for example, that customers and staff find it harder to deal with a novel and unfamiliar ordering regime or a more cost efficient delivery schedule and so on. Continuous Improvement tends in practice to take an extremely simplistic view of operational systems, regarding them generally as entirely stand alone, i.e. that a simple improvement in one element of a system will automatically result in an overall improvement of the entire system, when in fact the reverse can very often be true and cost savings made in one area are too often simply displaced to other elements of the system. The most obvious classical example of this would be a decision to use lower grade raw materials, resulting in increased waste, lower yields and problematic quality and also just harder and more demanding work for the operators. I have also discussed previously the problem of low pay. In simple terms paying low wages and then offering overtime is the still the most common and probably the most efficient method of matching production capacity to varying demand, whilst keeping overheads as low as possible. However since workers tend to come to depend on overtime to generate a decent wage, what price improvements in efficiency will result in staff working harder, being worse off or affected by redundancies? Two other factors also mitigate against continuous improvement in my experience and they are related to each other. There is a definite cost to constantly moving the furniture around. To put it bluntly, if you've got a job to do and you can't even find a spanner in the same place for 3 weeks on the run, let alone manage constant changes to procedure and increased workload, you tend to lose interest extremely rapidly, however sympathetic you might be in principle to the rationale for the changes. While it is probably true that these innovations if taken to their logical conclusion might in theory yield significant benefits, the transition is generally just too painful and, in the short term, not cost effective. In my experience it is also often badly managed by people with little real grasp of either the processes they are attempting to improve, or of the larger operational structure. Complex and difficult problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong, solutions. Conversely, there is an intrinsic pay off for operating familiar and consistent procedures with which people are confident and compliant. While it is the aim of Lean and Continuous Improvement to deliver such, optimum, operational procedures, too often and for the reasons discussed, established practice overrides innovation and much time, money and enthusiasm is wasted as a result. Finally, the benefits of Continuous Improvement and Lean are again too often viewed as completely open ended. Even in theory they are not, as Xeno's principle acknowledges. There generally comes a point at which further, 'Improvement,' begins to yield outcomes that are in fact counterproductive and there is just something to be said for knowing when to stop. Jeremy Craig-Weston, MIOM Related Topics:
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