Jim Womack & Dan Jones’s e-letters and rose Keanly’s article on the Lean transformation in the UK in November 08  

"I attended the Lean Transformation Summit in London on 21 November 2008, interested to hear from the lean experts their views on lean in the context of the global economic meltdown. Lead by Dan Jones and Jim Womack, some summary insights that I took out of the summit are:

-  "Good companies prosper in hard times". While there is a temptation to revert to traditional cost cutting in these times, the real need is to accelerate lean rather than allow this to happen. Lean is therefore at a critical juncture in many organisations - it either demonstrates that it can step up the pace or it will wither away.

-  Talking about pace, there was a wonderful presentation entitled "What would happen if your company was taken over by a really Lean organisation?" by Frits Nygaard who recounted the story of the takeover of Radiometer by Danaher. He was on the receiving end, being part of Radiometer, and gave us amusing yet telling insights into the pace at which Danaher managed this transition applying lean principles and the level of operational improvement that Radiometer achieved within very short periods of time thereafter.

-  Some new work that I found fascinating, and which is being lead by Jim Womack, is thinking emerging about what lean management is really about and how it contrasts to traditional management that emerged out of Sloan and has been taught in business schools etc for many decades. The starting assumption is that the work of management can be summarised as purpose, process and people - ensuring that the customer orientated purpose is clear, ensuring that waste, variability etc are eliminated from processes, and engaging employees to work towards continuous improvement. The contention is that traditional understanding of management is mis-aligned with this. Jim Womack then proceeded to contrast traditional versus lean management. An example, which should show how this thinking is developing, is that traditional management is based on the granting of authority as represented by vertical organisation structures. Lean management is about granting responsibility within a process culture for end to end processes, which promotes a horizontal view of the organisation. There are many more of these similar contrasts that are part of this new work that I am sure we will see much more of in months and years to come.

-  There was a huge focus, and repeated references to, the simplicity of the key tools needed to develop strategy, manage projects, ensure successful execution. These tools are PDCA (plan, do, check, act) and A3. PDCA was emphasized as a fundamental practice that needs to happen at every level of an organisation from daily work, through activity planning through to strategic business planning.
The A3 tool, as explained in a new book that John Shook has just published, is a key thinking tool. Very simply it is a 5 step process:

Step 1: What is the gap/problem?

Step 2: Why can't we close the gap?

Step 3: What are the top 3 possible countermeasures/solutions?

Step 4: Action plan

Step 5: What could go wrong and how would we handle it?         

 This A3 thinking is not only a valuable tool but a key way that leaders can develop their people.

-  Finally there were two stimulating presentations about new frontiers of lean in the world of advertising and new services. Especially interesting was a talk by Alan Cheatle CEO of Ten UK, an organisation that can best be described as providing concierge services for customers. A fascinating insight into "solving real personalised customer problems" rather than the traditional approach of generic and expensive advertising. I am sure that there will be much more written and spoken about in this arena in future."