Don't Get Too Lean

The problem with most of us is, we try to copy some one who is doing better.Lean system as implemented in Toyota may work very well for their environment- but that does not mean it is universal and has to work for everyone. For every company the situation is unique for that company. The set up time, minimum economic quantity, the supplier environment,economy of buying and shipping quantity- everything differs. The person who is in charge of the affairs should apply his mind according to the situation and take the most appropriate action to obtain best results, instead of blindly following or copying any system. We can always take some clues and ideas which may be very much helpful, but should see that the end results really benefit us. Many companies in the name of introducing lean , shift their inventories to suppliers to avoid interruption in their manufacturing plant and torture them to supply components on daily basis . In such companies, follow up and organizing activities consume most of the executives time and hardly any time left for concentration on innovations, improvements and at the end result in loosing peace of mind. Consultants will come with standards for all systems but ideas can never be standardized. What is good for one situation may not be so for another.

You need to make sure that the expensive parts of the system are fully occupied, to whit

There has been a drive to reduce the number of beds and the number of empty beds in UK hospitals as this absorbs costs - space, cleaners nurses (although the nurses on the wards tend to be the cheaper nurses) etc.

However if there are too few beds there is a risk that patients due for surgery cannot be admitted as there isn't a bed for them to be in before - for pre meds and then to recover after and so for the cost of saving a few cheap beds a hideously expensive operating theatre lies empty; a vastly paid surgeon sits twiddling his thumbs (ok so there is other stuff for him to do) and operating nursing staff are also unoccupied.

The patient in question was my dad, the surgery was a cancerous kidney which he had removed about a week later than intended,he died 8 months later of a stomach cancer - is all related - almost certainly not but we were certainly VERY pi55ed off at the time.

But like the system cited by the blogger when you move all the supply offsite and reduce the cash held up in on site inventory does anyone measure the extra work this creates for senior engineers / managers / execs. Engineers time isn't cheap on an absolute basis (we winge but an IChemE survey ranked chemical engineers 3rd in terms of graduate pay) and if they are worrying about supply chain issues and not why that boiler is blowing smoke / leaking etc then the replacement cost could be enormous