Want to Digitize Lean? Three Potential Pot Holes

​Lean Methodologies have long been the gold standard of efficiency across industries, from manufacturing to retail and healthcare. They’re proven to help companies improve accountability, reduce waste, solve problems and eliminate Disturbances to Flow..

It’s no surprise, then, that as more companies embrace digitization in pursuit of greater efficiency, there has been a push to integrate the two initiatives. In an analysis of the “digital lean” trend, Deloitte suggested this merge could improve asset efficiency by up to 20% and reduce costs by up to 30%.

If implemented carefully, digital solutions can certainly help increase the effectiveness of long-standing Lean Methodologies. But the key word is “carefully.” Many organizations assume digitization will create discipline, accountability and insight. In reality, digitization amplifies whatever already exists, good or bad.

Businesses shouldn't use technology as a shortcut—they need a firm grasp on their Lean principles before they can uncover true efficiency from digitization. Consider these three common mistakes businesses make when integrating digital with Lean and how to avoid them:

Pot Hole #1: Losing The Benefits Of Physical Lean Activities

Digitization allows teams to assign tasks and review metrics online, seemingly reducing the need for all-hands meetings and giving frontline employees more time to accomplish tasks. There’s a purpose to those rigorous meetings, though, as they help build a sense of accountability across teams. It’s questionable whether saving time is worth losing the collaborative benefits of traditional Lean activities.

Take Daily Management Report-Outs, for example. These meetings give teams the opportunity to not only report issues but also work together on structured problem-solving. They give younger team members a chance to see how their efforts improve Safety, Quality and Productivity during the past 24 hours and the objective for the coming 24. Gradually, over days and weeks through observation and participation allows them to grow into future leaders. In addition, physically writing or changing numbers on a tier board reinforces ownership. Employees are quicker to defend the data and act on it.

Digital or use of a simple white board is always a huge debate between ourselves and our clients. We prefer white boards, they can be updated very quickly and everyone is capable, no need to fumble with passwords and keyboards. Manual updating using a marker or applying pencil to paper automatically exponentially increases the emotional attachment between the Team Member and the Process.

Don't even consider eliminating your Daily Management Report-out with something digital. There is nothing more powerful than having you critical stakeholders assembled in one meeting to get rid of that traditional Manufacturing Coat of Arms (Not my Problem) so proper responsibility and accountability can be assigned, if not be prepared for your e-mail inbox to get overwhelmed.

As companies look at deploying digital lean, their focus should be on improving activities at the senior leadership level or higher, such as data visibility and analysis. Disrupting essential frontline activities and Daily Management Report-Outs can cause a domino effect that impairs future lean efforts rather than lay a foundation for improvement.

Pot Hole #2: Neglecting A System of Accountability

Digitized systems can recognize patterns of operational issues and initiate procedures such as A3 corrective actions. In theory, this is a positive—reducing the chance a bottleneck goes unnoticed. It’s not good enough to simply issue an alert, though, as they can be typed up and filed away, never to see the light of day because of a lack of human accountability.

Truly committing to lean principles means ensuring there’s accountability for fixing the problem. Businesses need processes in place to create a clear problem statement, identify the root cause, assign ownership and set a defined due date. The computer can’t be responsible for checking on progress, so there also still needs to be a structured follow-up between teams to keep a solution moving forward.

I am a fan of Morning Market to visually keep track of Open A3's but once they have been closed we strongly suggest that they be filed for at 3 months and then revived for additional verification that the implemented Corrective Action is still in place and effective.

In general, if companies want to implement a digital system, they must ensure that the technology makes acting on a problem easier than ignoring it. Integrating digital into an already mature lean environment can help executives understand what corrective measures haven’t been acted on, but technology alone isn’t enough for true accountability.

Pot Hole #3: Failing To Proactively Leverage Data

No matter the industry, executives want easier ways to collect data, and technology deployed in a digital lean system can rapidly spike data intake. These systems are monitoring every aisle and dock in the warehouse, every floor of the hospital, every checkout of the store. Businesses across industries are practically drowning in information.

Of course, the real benefit of digital lean lies in how this information is used. When teams are trained on Lean methodologies and commit to following them, they’re better equipped to harness these massive data lakes, structure the information and use it to make operational decisions.

Unfortunately, companies that neglect laying a Lean foundation are more likely to only see these solutions as easier ways to compile reports and visualize data. Businesses should instead use digitization to “predict” the future, uncovering patterns across facilities and departments, over months and years. If executives trained in Lean can uncover an operational hiccup in May that occurs every November at 30% of locations, they have time to identify what’s undercutting efficiency and explore potential solutions months before they experience impacts.

With so much data now available it can become a challenge on what the vital few measures your Team should focus on. I have a couple of suggestions A) your organization should focus on a single metric, the saame one each and every day. B) Delve into the data if you are not meeting your metric. C) Engage your Quality department to review data strings like a Histogram and report any alarming trends or issues that occur with a certain frequency. They are trained in this observation.

Establishing Lean Principles Before Introducing Digital

There are no shortcuts to understanding and implementing a Lean system. The methodology’s true value lies in the behaviors, routines and problem-solving capabilities employees master over months and years. Losing any element of that learning process disrupts efficiency gains.

Only when digital is embedded into mature Lean Organizations, then programs at the right levels can be enhanced by how the team identifies and solves problems. This merge offers cross-site visibility, pattern recognition at scale, earlier warning signals and predictive insights. When companies get this right, they can move faster and develop solutions earlier while preparing their staff to become lean leaders and creating a long-lasting culture of efficiency.​

Frequently, as Organizations use and initially embrace non-digital applications to certain Lean Methodologies the appetite to go Digital seems to disappear or takes on a completely different format.