La alegría de Jesús en el camino de la teología

This section looks at the experiences overseas and NZ companies have had with sustaining lean and TQM initiatives over the last decade. Similarly to lean, TQM has been widely used by organisations as a CI initiative in recent years. TQM is a management paradigm based on the principles of total customer satisfaction, CI, employee involvement and management leadership (Venkateswarlu and Nilakant 2005). Both TQM and lean have evolved into comprehensive management systems and both systems have many overlapping features such as an emphasis on customer satisfaction, high quality, comprehensive employee training, empowerment, management commitment, communications, etc (Shin 2009).

Sustaining the gains from lean transformations has become a challenge for many companies that have started the journey (Woods and Robert 2008). Companies generally experience good initial gains to productivity, quality, staff morale, etc, but the majority fail to sustain these improvements in the long-term (Shin et al 1998). Emiliani (2005) states that while thousands of companies worldwide have been engaged in lean transformations for five to ten years or more, most achieve only modest levels of improvements. Hines et al. (2006) also express concern about the sustainability of lean in organisations where improvements in productivity are followed by a steady decline to baseline, and sometimes even below baseline levels. In a relatively short time span strategies and processes are abandoned and shop floor employees regress to previous methods of working.

It has been suggested that at least 50% of improvement programmes are deemed by firms to be failures over the longer term and up to 70% fail to achieve all of their intended benefits (Found et al. 2006). Venkateswarlu and Nilakant (2005) mention that 75% of American and British firms have introduced some form of improvement initiatives and two out of three of these programmes simply grind to a halt. Their study of five organisations attempting TQM in NZ since the early 1990’s showed that only two out of the five organisations had persisted with their initiatives. Redman and Grieves (1999) and Shin et al. (1998) quote failure rates between 60-90% for TQM

initiatives. Soltani et al. (2005) mention that only 20% of British companies surveyed believe their TQM programme had achieved tangible results. Bhasin et al. (2006) state that only 10% of lean implementations are successful. A recent survey by the Lean Enterprise Institute on 999 respondents reported that only 4% characterised their progress as ‘advanced’ while 46% characterised their lean implementation efforts as ‘early’. The survey found that most companies have great difficulty implementing and sustaining lean principles and practices.

The next section looks at common reasons for failure to sustain CI transformations.

1.8.1 Common reasons for CI transformation failures

It is generally accepted that when improvement initiatives such as lean and TQM fail, it is not because there was a basic flaw in the principles of lean or TQM, but because an effective system was not created to execute these principles properly (Shin et al

1998). Improvement initiatives require strong organisational commitment, substantial time and effort, and major changes in the organisational culture and business practices (Sohal 1999). It is important for companies to clearly understand what it takes to succeed and achieve high performance. The following factors are the most commonly published reasons for implementation failures:

o _{Lack of SMT commitment: SMT exhibit wasteful behaviours while trying to}

eliminate waste and they do not directly participate in improvement activities (Emiliani and Stec 2005; Sim and Rogers 2009; Soltani et al. 2005; Venkateswarlu and Nilakant 2005).

o _{High turnover of senior managers: CI efforts will be broken and disjointed}

with new leaders. Changes in leadership frequently lead to a change in management philosophy (Emiliani and Stec 2005; Redman and Grieves 1999; Venkateswarlu and Nilakant 2005; Woods and Robert 2008).

o _{Poor communication between the senior managers and the shop-floor staff}

(Dale 1997; Kallage 2006; Sim and Rogers 2009; Witcher 2002).

o _{Poor leadership: this has often been found to be the reason for poor}

sustainability of change initiatives with many organisations possessing good managers but not necessarily good leaders (Hines et al. 2006).

o _{Staff resistant to change or lack of staff buy-in due to fear of job losses: people}

are generally hesitant to change what they have been doing for many years. Countless managers view change initiatives as a way to reduce labour costs, typically through layoffs which contributes to staff resistance (Emiliani and Stec 2005; Kallage 2006; Redman and Grieves 1999; Sim and Rogers 2009).

o _{Compulsions to change: successful transformations depend on external or}

internal factors. In the absence of an external ‘pull’ factor or crisis e.g. financial crisis or downturn, a strong internal ‘push’ factor in the form of a champion is necessary (Barker 1998; Emiliani and Stec 2005; Kallage 2006; Venkateswarlu and Nilakant 2005).

o Experience and fit of champion: having a champion with appropriate

background, knowledge and experience increases the chances of mistake free implementation (Lasa et al. 2008; Shohal 1999; Venkateswarlu and Nilakant 2005).

o _{Little or no focus or awareness of customer values (Dale 1997; Emiliani and}

Stec 2005; Shin et al. 1998) .

o _{Lack of clear understanding of key principles leads to a piece-meal}

implementation: organisations do not understand lean as a comprehensive

management system that will remove waste in every business process rather than just operations (Bhasin and Burcher 2006; Emiliani and Stec 2005; Kallage 2006; Shin et al. 1998; Worley and Doolen 2006).

o _{Employees are poorly trained to undertake improvement initiatives (Dale}

1997; Emiliani and Stec 2005; Kallage 2006; Sim and Rogers 2009).

o _{Poor strategy development and deployment: improvement initiatives should be}

clearly aligned to company’s strategic priorities, competitive environment and goals (Emiliani and Stec 2005; Kallage 2006; Shin et al. 1998).

o _{Short-term focus: successful transformations require management to focus on}

the long-term without losing sight of important short-term goals (Bhasin and Burcher 2006; Dale 1997; Emiliani and Stec 2005; Redman and Grieves 1999; Sohal 1999).

o _{Existence of a blame-culture: where everyone blames the system, other teams,}

management, etc, for productivity short comings (Barker 1998; Emiliani and Stec 2005)

o _{Failure to embed a CI culture: organisations need to transform their culture}

and become consistent with lean or TQM principles (Bhasin and Burcher 2006; Kallage 2006; Shin et al. 1998; Sohal 1999).