Companies generally appear to begin their journeys much as was done at Cessna: as a series of projects, tackling discrete issues in a tactical manner. But Cessna was able to advance beyond this; it saw the need to pursue higher levels of maturity. What are these levels? After observing and researching lean initiatives over time, I began to see a pattern. Despite focusing on “continuous improvement,” all lean efforts do not appear to continuously progress. Instead, they appear to fall into a series of plateaus—distinct levels of their advancement
in maturity, as depicted in Figure 3-1.