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Having been involved with helping people in organisations implement Lean over a period of 10 years, I have spent a lot of time talking about the 5 Principles of Lean which were popularised by Womack and Jones in their book “Lean Thinking”. I have summarised the 5 principles here.

Value
Ensure we understand “value” from the customer’s perspective and be careful to take the time to actually explore this with our customers, so that we do not fall into the trap of making inaccurate assumptions.

Value Stream
Identify the process steps that create the value identified in the first principle.  It is here that we start to recognise waste or non value added steps in our process.  This principle is achieved using a process known as Value Stream Mapping which is a method used to understand and record all material and information flow required to bring our product or service to the customer.

Flow
This principle uses a variety of continuous improvement tools and techniques to eliminate anything in the process that results in waste and delays.  This principle is about working towards a process that delivers “value” with the most effective use of our resources.

Pull
Once we have improved the way our processes create value and shortened the lead time of those processes, we are then in a position to link our process more closely to actual customer demand.  The objective here is to get a close as we can to producing to demand with little or no inventory in our systems.

Perfection
This principle is about the continuing striving for the perfect process by continually removing successive layers of waste as they are uncovered.

Lately I have had a question in the back of my mind about how well these 5 principles really help people understand how to best adapt the Toyota Production System (TPS) for their own organisations.

The Womack and Jones 5 principles are valuable in that they provide a structure for implementing Lean which starts by ensuring our processes are improved in line with creating the most value for our customers, and therefore providing a profitable future for our company.

But how do we explain what needs to be done to ensure that Lean will be a success, and why is it that so many companies simply end up mimicking Toyota and never manage to “internalise” Lean into their culture?  Why is it that companies usually focus only on the Lean tools, rather than on the thinking that is required to correctly deploy the tools?  Why is it so few companies achieve sustainable results by permanently transforming their organisations using Lean?  Could it be that Womack and Jones’ 5 principles are too much of a simplification?

During my quest to find better ways to help people understand how to be successful with Lean, I have been reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean by Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino.  They open their book with a chapter that sets out their 5 principles of Lean.  Based on the 4 rules by Steven Spears and H. Kent Brown the 5 principles offer another level of insight into the thinking required in our organisations to ensure success with Lean.  The Flinchbaugh and Carlino 5 principles are:

1. Directly observe work as activities, connections, and flows. The language of Lean will be found if we look for ways to structure, operate and improve our activities, connections and flows.  Every product, material and piece of information should flow through simple and specific pathways.  Understanding our current reality will require deep observation and a framework to “digest” and “expose” opportunities.  Value Stream Mapping can be a useful method to better understand our activities, connections and flows.

2. Systematic waste elimination. Often we hear people say that the purpose of Lean is to eliminate waste, however the real goal of Lean is to realise our true profit potential.  So waste elimination is an enabler for Lean and if we are to be successful with Lean we will need to be systematic in our approach to waste elimination.  This will require a good understanding of waste (and value) from the customer’s perspective and then we will need to be relentlessly pursuing systematic waste elimination on a daily basis.  The 7 wastes will be useful, however our focus on waste is not complete unless our processes and practices systematically address waste on a daily basis.

So far, Flinchbauer and Carlino have presented similar thinking to Womack and Jones.  However, the next principle cuts to the heart of the Lean philisophy and is probably where there is the biggest disconnect between current practice and the true intent of Lean.

3. Establish high agreement of the “what” and the “how”. Tools such as 5S and Visual Workplace are designed fundamentally to achieve the principle of high agreement for  the “what” and  the “how”.  Achieving high agreement of the “what” is relatively straight forward as we develop and set goals and objectives, whereas achieving high agreement of the “how” is more difficult.  Having agreement about the standard way of executing a process is the starting point for all continuous improvement.  If we do not have a standard, how can we improve on it?  Standardisation is a continuous process of reaching a deeper and more detailed level of refinement.  Standards will usually be communicated visually, so that we can walk into any process and immediately determine whether the process is operating normally or abnormally.

4. Systematic (and Systemic) problem solving. For this we need an environment where we see every problem as a way to move closer to the ideal state. and any gap between current reality and ideal is seen as a “problem”.  Creating an environment where problems are seen as good opportunities for  experimentation and improvement is easier said than done.  Our traditional culture is one where we see it as a weakness to admit to a problem or make a mistake.  Also people are often rewarded for solving a major problem, when we should be rewarding people for ensuring that the problem is prevented through systemic continuous improvement.

Decision making and problem solving should be pushed to the lowest possible level because this is where it is most likely that we will find the “right” answers.  However, this requires rules and high agreement for the problem solving process and boundaries for our problem solving activities.  This principle has a big overlap with the principle of achieving high agreement.

5 Create a learning organisation. This principle relies heavily on principle number 4, and using  agreed problem solving processes at all levels in the business to work on the systems that should be  preventing problems from happening.  We need to be spending more time reflecting on how the organisation works, thinks and improves and get into the habit of doing this daily.  This reflection should be happening at all levels in the organisation. The more points of reflection we can create the faster, deeper and more sustainable our transformation will be.

Leaders must be learners and teachers, open to changing themselves and involving themselves in the learning and experimentation that results from principles 3 and 4, and setting an example by leading from the front.  Everyone in the organisation can take on a leadership role by becoming change agents.  Everyone is involved with closing the gap between the current reality and the vision or ideal state.  Focusing on how to close the gap is where the leader is learning. Helping others close the gap is where the leader is teaching.

On balance, I think Flinchbauer and Carlino add some further insight into the 5 Principles of Lean and have helped us understand what it takes to internalise some of the Lean fundamentals, in particular the use of  “high agreement” to ensure standardisation and systematic waste elimination and problem solving at all levels of the organisation to help us become a Learning Organisation.

“Lean starts with rules , not tools.”

Jamie Flinchbaugh can be found at www.LeanLearningCenter.com