Dudley Child

The main problems and obstacles in going lean are rarely on the shop floor, but usually higher up the organisation in management. You also see whether top management just sees lean as a way of engaging employees in seeing and eliminating waste, by deploying lean tools right across operations or whether in fact lean improvement activities are being focused on closing the key performance gaps that are critical to the success of the organisation, by redesigning both the products and the processes that make and deliver them to customers.

A lean "model line" is a closely connected series of processes that are the target of focused implementation of lean principles.

A lean "model line" is a closely connected series of processes that are the target of focused implementation of lean principles. When the 16-week model line approach has finished it is unlikely to last long after the consultants have left as the organisation will not have learnt enough to replicate it elsewhere. In other words how many employees have been infected with lean process thinking and would not want to return to the “bad old days” before lean.

Overall it is evident that for many years now lean has continuously being implemented into organisations by using visual tools such as 5’s, JIT (just in time), Kaizen, Kanban, Value Stream Mapping. Model lines are good ways to build support and commitment for lean implementation at many levels, but if an organisation experiences resistance and lack of motivation how do they overcome this? It is all good having visual tools but organisations need to look below the lean iceberg into the leadership and behaviour.

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Key words
Lean, 5’s, JIT (just in time), Kaizen, Kanban, Value Stream Mapping and model line.