1 comment

• 

  mark howard

  2 years ago

  What's that line about never believing what you read in the papers?
  There’s nothing the media likes better than “the world’s gone mad” stories.
  The taped up civil servants’ desks is a classic example of the genre. By reducing to absurdity, the media missed the point of lean working which has led to Toyota, becoming the world’s best and most successful motor manufacturer.
  
  Lean isn’t about tidy desks but the mindset that goes behind them. Everyone is familiar with mechanics putting tools back on a peg board.
  
  They do that so they don’t waste time hunting for the tool the next time they need it. The lean principle about being tidy and ready for work is simply applied commonsense and no, Unipart never recommended putting tape round items on desks.
  
  Keeping work stations business-like is especially relevant in hot desking or shift-working but applies anywhere. But that’s just a tiny part of thinking lean.
  
  
  
  Lean is really about getting the people who do the work to suggest continuous improvements to how they work, have them reviewed by their workmates in a structured way which tests new ideas rigorously and have a system which allows improvements to be cascaded rapidly.
  
  It works extremely well if the complete set of tools and techniques is rigorously applied and the culture is prepared for some genuine workforce involvement.
  
  It kills command and control management as in lean it is the team that does the work which decides how the work gets done.
  
  To get lean right you need that culture as well as the tools and techniques. Unipart is way ahead of the field after 20 years refinement thanks to its automotive heritage.
  
  Still that probably would not make such a good media soundbite! But don’t take our/my word for it have a look at what an independent academic says at http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/research/cen...
  
  Oh and we don't have management consultants, what we do is second people well-versed in lean from their ordinary jobs into a client. Once the assignment is over they return to their normal activities with client and Unipart having gained - after all the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.
  
  It may seem like sophistry but our people prefer the term "expert practitioner" as they do and have held down real jobs, in the real world for many years in a growing and profitable company which works for blue chips such as Vodafone, 3, BSkyB, Jessops, Homebase and Halfords carrying out third party logistics
  reply