What Would Happen If…?

By: Peter Hines, S A Partners

Think for a minute:

Clearly, in each case you might be embarrassed, frustrated and or an inconvenience to others. You would probably also incur a lot of waste and excess cost. Indeed, your less than ideal behaviour would be a big problem.

Now let’s think about the work situation:

Although we may not realise it when we do these things, the outcome is likely to be pretty much the same as the first three home-based examples. These less than ideal work behaviours are caused partly through carelessness, but are probably more likely because we have not been thinking systemically. Indeed, they almost certainly point to failures to define, design, implement and sustain effective systems in the organisation, such as leader standard work, communications and supply chain integration.

So what should we do? Well to start with, we should work to define the key systems within our organisation and its wider supply chain. Second, we should review how these work from a technical point of view, but more importantly from a behavioural point of view. Third, we should prioritise improvement activity by systems based on the importance of the system and how far your current practices differ from the ideal. Fourth, we should ensure we develop a discipline to maintain and further improve these systems.

Sounds easy, but these are some of the hard yards on your enterprise excellence journey. Oh, and if you succeed, you may even learn how to avoid the first three home-based problems!

Peter Hines, Chairman, S A Partners

Professor Peter Hines is chairman of S A Partners and co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University, the largest academic lean research centre globally. He is a multiple winner of the Shingo Research Award for Staying Lean (2009) and Creating a Lean & Green Business System (2014). He is also a visiting professor at Waterford Institute of Technology.

Find out more about how to think systemically with Peter in S A Partners’ next Shingo Master Class: http://www.sapartners.com/events/shingo-master-class/.

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