2. What are the driving forces to implement Lean?

The second question we asked was why service organisations choose to implement Lean. There seem to be many and different reasons for this, and people in the same company often have different answers.

The survey results however, do not come as a surprise. The top three reasons, Quality, Cost and Customer Satisfaction are well known trademarks of Lean companies since many years.

Challenge 2: What are the driving forces to implement Lean?

The improved end-to-end process perspective also encompasses answers about improving cooperation in and outside the organisational boundaries. This is strong driving force for respondents both in Private and Public Sectors who see problems with departments working as silos and other government organisations optimising their own performance instead of maximising the output of the process.

One respondent lists many different driving forces and also that they can change with time:
"The purpose is to support our CEO in the vision to be ONE Company since we were and still are a company with different cultures, processes and infrastructure internally. // We started to implement a common way of working to increase efficiency and reduce cost. Today however, focus has shifted more towards increased Customer Satisfaction and improved processes end-to-end."

Follow and contribute to the discussions on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/What-are-driving-forces-implement-123111.S.51031351?view=&gid=123111&type=member&item=51031351
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=50580423&gid=1816278&commentID=37091576&goback=%2Egmp_1816278%2Eamf_1816278_1511915&trk=NUS_DISC_Q-subject#commentID_37091576

1. What is Lean?

In order to understand how Lean should be implemented we must understand what Lean is and what it means in Service, Support and Administration. Hence, the first question we asked the experts was: What is Lean?

The answers to this questions where quite long and exhaustive, so we grouped the answers into seventeen categories. Some of these where only mentioned by one or two people, but almost 90% of the respondants refer to Lean as a way to relate, a philosophy or a culture of continuous improvement.

Answers to challenge 1: What is Lean?

Only a handful respondents refer to Lean as a toolbox or methodology. This contrast quite alot from how Lean is often perceived and described by people and organisations that are new to Lean. This is critical in order to successfully embark on a Lean journey and really become Lean.

A conclusion should be that the leaders and employees must develop an understanding of Lean and spend time to reflect about what it means to their industry, their organisation and themselves. This however, can not be done overnight. The insight about Lean must be developed throughout the implementation and never stop, it should be part of becoming a learning organisation.

Leaders and employees who want to understand the philosophy behind Lean can take trainings, attend seminars and read books, articles and blogs like this one about Lean Management. Other ways to learn is of course to get started, test the concept, evaluate the results and then implement on larger scale. In other words Plan, Do, Check and Act…

How to become Lean?

During late autumn 2010 Centigo carried out a major study in Sweden about Lean in the service sector. In the prestudy we defined 10 major challenges when implementing Lean. Challenges that often stops Lean programs from becoming successful. These challenges were:

1. What is Lean?
2. What are the driving forces to implement Lean?
3. Where and how to start an implementation?
4. Which roles and responsibilities are needed?
5. How is motivation among the employees created?
6. How to develop focus on the customer / citizen?
7. How to create flow (in service production)?
8. How to standardize ways of working?
9. How to create a culture of quality and continuous improvement?
10. How to measure the results?

We then asked 63 identified Lean practitioners with 3 to 20 years experience from implementing Lean about challenges and success factors for each of these 10 challenges. The industries and sectors represented in the survey were:

The study was carried out as an explorative survey with 90% open questions. The answers were analysed by grouping answers with similar meaning together and counting the frequency for different anwers. We have also done a very detailed analysis of each quote to draw the right conclusions.

Exactly one year after the project started the study is completed and we would like to share and discuss the findings with all Lean thinkers - expert, beginner or just curious people. In the coming weeks we will post the answers and key findings here.

Many thanks to Dan Spinelli Scala and Eric Andersson-Forsman, students from the Stockholm School of Economics, who did all the ground work.