by Lee Fried, on 17 May 2006 12:30 pm
The Journey
Leap of Faith
One of the teams that I am working with is having a hard time understanding how applying LEAN principles to their work will help them make improvements in quality and efficiency. The team is made up of a group of managers with long tenure that have always been taught to maximize direct labor through batch and queue process and reliance on specialization. Don’t get me wrong, the team is open to new ideas, but they are struggling with them. Through weeks of process walks, data collection and training the team has gotten close to seeing the benefits, but the absolute proof of concept will only come through experience and application. Thus, a leap of faith is in order. I am hoping that I have prepared the team well enough to make the leap, and will find out on Friday when I ask for their commitment to move forward with the project. If not, there will be many blog entries to come discussing my contingency plans. Stay tuned…