I was discussing Lean with one of our members who had recently started to train their customer service team. The customer had just finished our series on visual managementent and was curious, why not just eliminate managers all together?

The Role of a Manager

It all depends on what the role the manager fills in your organization. The traditional image of a middle manager, exemplified in the movie “Office Space”, is an older employee who wanders around and tells other people what to do. It is all top down communication, the manager directs each employee when and how to carry out their tasks.

In a Lean system, employees use visual management to communicate their tasks to each other and self-manage. There is no need for someone to go around and tell people what to do, with the transparency of Lean, they already know what needs to be done.

So what happens to managers in a Lean system? Simple, their role changes.

The Mentor and Team Player

Instead of directing people, a Lean manager becomes more of a coach, stepping in to assist with a difficult task or providing additional training to round out your team’s skill matrix. By being on the shopfloor or front lines, the manager can nurture struggling employees and help facilitate the Kaizen process when problems are encountered.

Instead of being “above” the workers, the manager moves into a support position; filling in for sick employees, providing additional assistance to meet a deadline and keeping an eye out for the big picture.

In other words, a Lean manager is the ultimate team player.

Changing Culture of Management

By changing the role of a manager, you can drastically improve the workplace culture. By shifting their duties to supporting others, you can reduce the “us versus them” conflict that can plague workers and management. Instead, employees can see management as truly committed to helping them do their jobs, instead of telling them how to do their jobs.

So are managers a waste? Not necessarily. If you accept the new roles and responsibilities as a Lean manager, you will never become a waste.

Moore’s law states that the computing power of circuitry will double every two years. Over the last century, civilization has made huge leaps forward in almost every field. Technology, finance, even soft science fields like psychology and human geography have all changed drastically both in content and their methods. However, if you consider education, especially workplace education, we have been at a standstill.

In the 1900s, if you wanted to learn, you sat at a desk with thirty other students while the teacher told you the information. After that, you would be assigned homework and then the next day you would do it all again. In the last hundred years, that formula has remained the same.

For people learning on the job, if you needed training, a manager or a trainer would take you into a stuffy room, you would sit down at a desk, and they would tell you what you needed to know.

It is time to take learning into the next century. Already, schools are experimenting with the use of a “Flipped Classroom” where the students watch the lecture at home and then spend the classroom time applying the concepts. That way, the students don’t spend their time passively consuming the knowledge but apply it when the teacher can help them with the process.

Workplace learning has just begun to take off. Using the power of video and the internet, people are streaming information directly to the worksite. Rather than being sealed off in a training room, employees can access the skills they need, right when they need it.

üttana is proud to be part of this growing industry. Our courses are meant to be accessed at the worksite. In other words, we are applying the concepts of Just-In-Time to the realm of education. The knowledge becomes accessible precisely at the moment it is needed.

By providing transcripts, videos, downloadable presentations and thought pieces like this blog, we reach the brain in a variety of ways, using a technique called the multiple intelligences theory.

Everyone learns in different ways. For many years, teachers only appealed to those whose brains could best process linguistic or mathematical information. We taught with words and numbers. However, modern psychologists believe that people learn in a variety of ways and the best way to convey information is to appeal to these multiple intelligences.

Finally, after decades of doing the same thing over and over, the field of education is moving forward. Come join us.

Hoshin Kanri can be translated into English as “Policy Management.” The Japanese word for policy, hoshin, consists of two characters, which translate as “direction” and “needle.” This quickly brings to mind the image of an arrow, or the needle of a compass that points an organization down the right path. This is how Hoshin Kanri should be thought of. It isn’t the strict hand of authority policing an organization. It is more like a scientific instrument guiding everyone in the direction they need to go.

Hoshin Kanri is a goal and policy setting process between different levels and departments, that aligns the organization both vertically and horizontally. Every department is able to set its own specific Hoshin Kanri that is in line with the higher level Hoshin goals of the organization. This structure connects the vision, values, and philosophy of company leaders to the actual work at each level. It also provides opportunities for innovation and improvement.

Click here to view our entire video training series about Hoshin Kanri. Our series covers everything from basic overviews on up to advanced implementation with all the supplemental presentations and infographics you need to bring your whole team up to speed.

Paul Akers had a very simple message for the attendees at the 2013 Washington State Government Lean Conference, “Fix What Bugs You!” Ferndale entrepreneur and Lean author Paul Akers used his keynote address to tell his personal story of going Lean. “Lean is not about being organized, because you can organize waste.” When he started his woodworking supply company, FastCap, he was having some trouble managing his inventory. He brought in a Lean expert who took one look at his facility and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” Akers was blown away and began to investigate Lean.

Since then, he has written a book, 2 Second Lean, and spoken with groups across the world about how to start going Lean. His approach to Lean is straight forward- look around at your work and see what you can do to make your work a little easier. His employees, and Akers himself, have uploaded hundreds of short youtube videos documenting their improvements at FastCap – allowing workers to share ideas and see improvements.

We can all learn from that simple question, “What bugs you?” By taking Lean down to this simple question, you are able to begin the process of continuous improvement and slowly improve your productivity.

Using Lean techniques like 5S and SMED, you can easily reduce waste on individual processes. But what happens when the problems are bigger than one process? How do you really assess the entire system, including customer requests, suppliers, distributors and service providers? One way to do this is with a Value Stream Map.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a high-level, visual representation of all of the process steps that are required to transform a customer request into delivered products or services. They show the connection between information and product flow, as well as any major barriers to moving the process forward. By using VSMs to document current and future state conditions, you can begin identifying Value Added and Non-Value Added activities.

Check out our whole series on Value Stream Mapping on uttana.com by clicking here. Below is a sampling of our free courses on VSM from our youtube channel.

Value Stream Mapping is a complex process, that requires support at the highest levels of your organization. Change does not happen overnight, but without the right support, change does not happen at all. Consider where your organization is today, are you looking at the big picture?

What is Lean Layout? 

Lean Layout is applying the concepts and principles of Lean to something larger than one process. Too often, Lean efforts become focused around the minutia – how do I reduce this changeover time, how do I eliminate waste at my workspace. Lean Layout is the big picture – it takes a step back and says how are you organizing your whole facility? Where is the waste? How could you reorganize the whole organization so that it fits with the concepts of flow and Just-In-Time?

Lean Layout can be a real game changer in terms of saving money and freeing up labor. Take the layout of an agricultural factory below as a before and after: