What’s an extremely difficult part of lean? Sustained improvement. Kaizen is best known and most often described as continual, incremental improvement. Kaikaku is perhaps best described as revolutionary improvement. Thus we have two ways to pursue sustained improvement, evolution and revolution. How do we achieve them?

Once the engine is rolling down the lean track, how do we keep it moving? By changing the way we think about the products we make. Before we can implement kaizen or kaikaku, we must understand how we make what we make.

Process management—the traditional approach
In traditional facilities, we track the progress of a product through each department—sales, customer service, scheduling, manufacturing, assembly, coating, packing, then through shipping to the transportation company. Each department has specific goals. Each has different day-to-day objectives than the others. How do we monitor and judge the success of a product when there are so many and varied avenues for the product to travel?

Often we fail. Why? A manufacturing cell has two orders due. One is a long run with short setup. The other, while “hot”, is short-run with an expensive setup. An order due later requires the same work. Often, the first order is run, not due to priority, but due to a desire to perform well (after all, no one likes the supervisor bearing down on them).

 …