There was about as good an article on lean in USA Today the other day as you will ever find in the popular media, describing a lot of good things happening on the factory floors at Sealy, Marlin Steel Wire, Dana, Carlisle Tire and ConMed. The folks there are racking up all of the typical lean improvements – labor costs down, floor space saved, quality improved – all the things the lean community has been promising for a long time.
The gist of the article is that these companies have been dabbling with lean for a while, but when the economy cratered they got serious. "While a growing number of companies have adopted the practices through the years, the number of converts has grown substantially during the economic downturn," said a guy from Manufacturer's Alliance. I have to wonder whether much of it is going to sustain once the economy comes back if the commitment to lean was driven by the need to immediately put out fire that was burning out of control, rather than a genuine understanding that lean is a better way to manage the business.
You never know who these folks really are and whether they really speak with authority, but the article said, "Driving the lean movement is an urgent need to pare inventory, executives say. With revenue down and tight-fisted banks reluctant to lend, the makers no longer can afford to tie up hundreds of millions of dollars in raw materials that languish in factories for weeks or months." If that's the case the likelihood of any of these companies becoming sustaining lean enterprises is pretty slim. 'The banks won't finance our waste any more so I guess we have to do this lean stuff' is hardly the sort of leadership required for excellence.
You never know, however. It sounds like Marlin Steel Wire is the real deal. They are a privately held company which ratchets up the probability of their management making sane decisions by orders of magnitude. Their focus is on teamwork, quality, flexibility and hammering down lead times – all the right objectives. See is they take the next step and structure themselves into true value streams, take on lean accounting and really become a lean enterprise and not just a lean manufacturer. That will tell the tale of sustainability.
Lantech seems to be an excellent case in point. They have done all of the factory stuff and the fluffy,cultural side of lean, but have a sustainability challenge. They have all the characteristics of a company that is committed to lean, but has yet to realize that lean is first and foremost about management – not factory floor practices or culture. With their passion for lean, however, odds are they will take the next big step.
Some of the others mentioned, such as Dana and Carlisle Tire, don't really have much hope. They are tied to the automotive industry which begs the question, What took you so long? Their copies of The Machine That Changed The World must have got lost in the mail twenty years ago. Their lean effort seems to be aimed squarely at headcount reduction, which means that, now that their copy of the lean book arrived, they didn't understand it.
Sealy – the star of the story – is going to face some challenges. They started their lean journey as a privately held company, then went public and they now have to answer to Wall Street. It will be interesting to see how they weather the insatiable, anti-lean pressure.
I suppose stories like this one help the lean cause more than they hurt. The publicity is generally favorable, but when companies like Dana and Carlisle fail – and the odds are overwhelming that they will – it will feed ammunition to the the manufacturing naysayers.
The moral of the story is that there is lean … and there is lean. The same old story applies. Some companies look lean and a few others truly are lean. Of course the writer for USA Today cannot be faulted for not knowing the difference, but it is very important for manufacturing management to know the difference between what is going on at places like Marlin and Lantech, and what is passing for lean at Dana.