Lean leadership

The Thursday’s workshop and the Friday’s conference were about Lean Manufacturing. They were chaired by the professor Dr. Peter Ward from the Ohio’s University, who is a recognized expert of theLean’s philosophy, in an international level. Even though, he is a very kind person. He is very available as well; he answered all the doubts that were surging through the events.
During the workshop, webasically dedicated to study what is and what is not Lean Manufacturing, concluding that it is not VSM or Kanban, these are just tools. Lean manufacturing is the art of matching the pace of productionwith customers pace; the flow, not batches or queues; eliminate waste, with the help of different tools and practices; and all this should be implemented involving the organization, if not, thesystem will probably fail. In fact, Dr. Ward mentioned that this is one of the principal reasons why a lean system fails.
Also, during the workshop, we deeply studied each one of the 5 steps that shouldbe taken in count in order to apply lean manufacturing: value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection. The one that caught my attention is the value stream; I knew it was kind of complex, but not howmuch. We have been always told that lean manufacturing needs changes; that’s why I think it’s important that Dr. Ward defined that these changes must be small and incremental, they are a powerfulcompetitive tool.
Another thing that was said, that really caught my attention, was that he considers that the most difficult thing about applying Lean, is to reach a good problem definition, and this isvery important because most of the time, there’s the solution. Also, I think it is almost emblematic another phrase he said to describe Lean system: “Hard on processes, easy on people”. And, talkingabout phrases, it also seems very reflexive one he said about perfection. He stated that in order to reach perfection, we have to assume that the clients are never satisfied.
On the other hand,...