What's the point?

Have you ever noticed how projects tend to deviate in unexpected ways, to end up different from your original vision? Fix Your Bottleneck was conceived for the purpose of exploring Lean applications outside of the factory walls where it was born. Instead, as I've been told and have noticed in reflection, it has almost become more of a journal, explained from my experience in the trenches. I suppose that's because I've always felt pressured to justify the reasons I liked to do Lean work. It's true that someone whose job is identifying cost saving projects and implementing the necessary changes may wind up creating a business so Lean that the next cost saving project is to downsize the Lean Team. Anyone who really gets it knows that this could be the natural evolution of the process. I'm definitely not saying that makes it okay, but when someone is really skilled in seeing simple ways to reduce waste and streamline flow, they should be in high demand for all kinds of jobs.

This week, to celebrate the fact that I refocused and remembered the grounds for this blog, I thought I'd share this fun illustration of a bottleneck, then give you a glimpse of what Lean actually looks like in action.

As much as I enjoy this commercial, it is important to point out that Lean (and Visa) are both customer focused. Implicating a purchaser for an efficiency issue would certainly be a misstep. Take a look at the next clip to see how Lean really is a customer driven initiative.

I hope this is helpful in tying together some of the things I have been discussing in the past few weeks. It wasn't easy for me to understand how making one piece at a time could be better than the assembly line where we had dozens of parts being produced at once, but over time it came into focus.

After standing back and looking at my somewhat disjointed discussions, it was obvious that even my blog could benefit from some continuous improvement!