Marco Jurídico

Some companies that I have helped have taken their incentive programs to a higher level. Although acknowledgment and praise are best in the long term, you can add yet another monetary incentive program. As a lean company, you want to continue to encourage production workers to come up with continuous improvement ideas all the time. This is kaizen. As I've mentioned, the suggestion form is a great way to garner fresh ideas from the production floor, but there is another way to get workers to make changes.

These improvements may take some time, because they are implemented as the days and weeks progress. If an operator sees an opportunity to make an improvement to the process, implements the improvement, and it reaps a financial savings or gain for the organization, you should award her with a check of some value.

For instance, suppose that a production worker sees a better way to package the products to reduce time and material. The recommendation should be reviewed by management and engineers to see whether it is feasible from a product specification perspective. After approval, the idea goes through an engineering change request process, and then the new process change is initiated. After a given period of time, the improvement can be measured to see whether it has made a positive impact on productivity and material cost. You can amortize the savings over a year to calculate its annual cost savings. If the improvement saved the company, say, $20,000 annually, the employee might receive a check for $500.

In the beginning, this kind of program will be slow to encourage workers, but after the first or second idea turns into a paycheck, more workers will be excited and will begin their own improvement projects. These projects, of course, involve other employees, but idea generation is the start. In addition, with a program in place to encourage the behavior, more production workers will become engaged in the process. Each company must establish guidelines for the program in regard to annual savings, time frames for implementation, and the amount of money to be paid to the worker. It is

another approach to soliciting continuous improvement ideas from factory floor workers.

Chapter Wrap-Up

Financial incentives in a lean journey are not the sole approach to thanking people for becoming multiskilled and contributing to continuous improvement efforts. Because lean manufacturing is a business approach, it essentially is a job requirement for working in a lean organization. But one of the reasons lean implementations fail on the shop floor is that the company does not recognize the contributions that can come from production workers. Many organizations are taking major steps to reward their best production workers and provide incentives for them to assist in implementing a lean program. Because lean manufacturing is truly a growth creator, you have numerous options to reward those who help you in your lean endeavors.

8. Lean Leadership Made Simple

Assuming the task of leadership can change you positively or negatively. It can make you a demon or a saint, and it will make or break your effort to implement lean manufacturing in your organization. A colleague of mine used to be a plant manager, and he earned a reputation for treating the people who worked for him very well. After several yeazars as their manager, he was promoted to a vice presidential position with the same company. Six months into his new position, we got together for lunch to discuss my plans to write this book. My friend was a much different person from the man I remembered. Corporate life had taken control of his identity, and he seemed genuinely disappointed with himself.

I remember clearly one of the things he said to me that day: "When you accept an executive position in corporate America, you have to leave all your ethical reasoning behind you." He explained that while working at the plant level, he still had some control and was able to create a pleasant work environment for his people. Now, as an executive, he had to play the role of a greedy, selfish, ruthless businessman. Although he realized that he could simply walk away from the company, it wasn't easy for him to do because the money and career opportunities were very beneficial. Therefore, he found himself in a continuous struggle, trying to maintain his former value system in a position that was in total opposition to his personal beliefs.

I realize his situation is not representative of all companies, but it got me to thinking about guiding employees through a lean journey. Can a company's past behavior toward its people affect the success of a lean effort? Are employees forced to work excessive overtime and placed into positions that make them unsuccessful and over time create a negative culture? My friend's company was beginning its lean journey, and he was experiencing a conflict between the way the leaders operated the organization and the way they were being taught lean manufacturing by lean practitioners like me. Lean journeys require investment, time, commitment, patience, and tolerance of mistakes. Managers controlling the day-to-day operations of the company were far from accepting this approach to business, and my friend eventually found himself looking for another job. It was a personal choice. My experiences over the past ten years in the lean field have taught me a lot of valuable things, especially about how to treat people. The companies I have assisted quickly realized that a new approach to leadership would be needed if they were to ensure success in their lean endeavors. I was, by no means, a perfect employee in the years before I founded my consulting company, Kaizen Assembly. In fact, I was a bit resistant to lean. However, I always believed that my resistance was normal, and I appreciated my great lean leaders. The most important principle I've learned is that the way we treat people in our lean journeys is the cornerstone of lean leadership.

I now use what I've learned to lead companies in a manner that seems fair and just, and I hope that this approach trickles down through their organizations. Organizations embarking on a lean journey need effective leaders who understand the importance of employee contributions and realize how much their efforts and attitudes affect the company's success or failure. Certain corporate leaders need to realize that even though aggressive practices may achieve short-term financial success, they also place the company on the path to a precarious future.

My colleague's perspective on leadership was altered dramatically after only a few months in an executive position. Although he realized the negative personal changes that were occurring, he simply had no choice except to acquiesce—to conform. But when lean was brought into the picture, he knew

it was time to leave.

Many executive leaders are breeding a middle management culture that is willing to sacrifice the rights of employees. This is an opinion developed from observations I have made. Again, not all leaders, but a good handful of them lead their organizations with too much negative reinforcement. Profits are necessary, but to help deal with the culture change in a lean organization, a mind-set that places profit before improvement can become an obstacle to success. Once the management level of a company has been indoctrinated, younger leaders are then trained to be loyal to the company at all costs, relinquishing their personal lives. The company becomes their lifeblood, and their identity becomes defined by a prestigious title and by their "loyalty and dedication" to the company (which translates into how much of their personal lives are sacrificed).