Barriers to Successful Implementation
Many of the companies that attempt to implement Lean experience difficulties and/or are not able to achieve the
anticipated benefits. Some of our own observations in this area include:
• The company fails to tie the improvement metrics to financial statements. In other words, the company only
reports the percent improvement and doesn’t convert this to a monetary measure. By not communicating in
the same language as management, the department or function implementing Lean doesn’t get the support
needed to continue the efforts.
• The company implements the building blocks in the wrong sequence. For example, if batch sizes are
reduced prior to reducing changeover time, and changeover times are lengthy, equipment utilization will
drop, and the ability to serve customers will be reduced. A typical reaction to this might be, “We tried to
implement Lean, and things got worse.” Of course, they did.
• Choosing a difficult or low-impact project as the first one. Lean isn’t difficult, but can be complicated
because of all the variables and communication involved. If the first Lean project isn’t successful or
generates little return on investment, cooperation and support for future projects will fade.
• Overlooking administrative areas. Some manufacturing environments, especially continuous processes (e.g.,
high-volume chemical manufacturers) have only small or insignificant opportunities in the production or
operations areas. Implementing Lean there will provide little impact.
• The company spends too much time on training and not "doing," or they start at the wrong place.
• Failing to expand lean implementation to the supply chain. Because of the need for just-in-time delivery of
materials, minimization of inventories and Lean's dependence upon high quality products and services,
companies need to bring suppliers into the improvement efforts. If critical suppliers cannot deliver on time,
and in smaller quantities, the benefits of Lean will be greatly diminished or even non-existent. The development of a lean supply chain is probably one of the most difficult, but more financially rewarding,
aspects of implementing Lean.