I am in Japan helping to lead one of our lean manufacturing benchmarking trips. What I took away from the debriefing from yesterday’s lean benchmarking visit was a series of lessons on how to sustain a lean culture after 10 years. The company we visited had made a few defining choices, played its cards well so to speak, and this shows in how it operates its lean management system and sustains its lean culture. These can be summarized as follows:

Bottom up trumps top down

The early years of a lean transformation tend to be directive and driven by a senior leadership or a compelling business need, such as a crisis. This was the case for this company. Crises come and go, as do senior managers. There should always be a top-down element to kaizen, but in the case of this company, the major focus is on bottom-up engagement and continuous daily improvement at the workplace. Senior management’s role is to make sure these small improvements add up to something tangible and strategically meaningful.

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