E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

On a number of occasions I wrote about Mass Customization (aka Lean, Toyota Production System, Just in Time, JIT, TPS, etc.), but I came to realize that most people do not understand the topic. I hope to rectify the problem in this article and also expand on why lean can only operate in the environments that completely change the way they view the relationships between Management and Labor.

Lean is an approach to processing differentiated products (services) in a more or less continuous flow. So, unlike pure Project Management, we do not manage each project individually. But unlike Mass Production (assembly line), we produce things (services) that are purposely not identical.

This approach captures the low cost of the assembly line (and often lowers it) and the flexibility of custom production (to a large degree) of the project based approach. It is much more effective that either because it consistently delivers what the market wants, rather than pushing it’s output down the market’s throat, but at costs that are often below those of a typical mass producer.

Subway restaurants are probably the most familiar examples of lean. Every sandwich is built exactly to the customer specifications, yet the work is done on the assembly line. The store is extremely scalable from one worker during slow hours to seven during the rush. It relies on the fresh products, and since the customer sees what is being put on to the sandwich, Subway is forced to use good quality produce that it has to buy just about daily.

There is an aspect of Lean that Subway lacks, however. The almost religious dedication by the workers to continuous improvement. Because it is a franchise, there is little opportunity for the individual employees to show initiative or to change a process.

Yet, the only way lean works, is if the people that are involved are engaged in the process, i.e. they care what they do. Nothing more annoying than a Subway employee with a bad attitude. The lean environment is a high trust environment: the employees cannot possibly be tightly supervised, they have to show initiative and creativity. They have to have a continuously learning organization.

Have you come across any organizations that look lean?

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