If your vision for keeping your manufacturing company lean
involves drawing up a plan and then telling your floor supervisors
to make it happen, good luck. Lean leadership is a hands-on value
proposition — one you cannot overlook if you want your
manufacturing operations to go lean.
Your role as top executive of a lean operation is to be an agent
of change. You need to be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary.
But the revolution will not happen unless you teach your employees,
from management to maintenance, to become leaders with you.
Lean Strategies
To do that, examine how your company operates today. If its
focus is on satisfying the chain of command and designing
additional policies and procedures to address problems, you have a
bureaucracy. Correct this by using lean strategies yourself to
demonstrate their value. Here are some ways to start:
