Lean manufacturing refers to a simple way of enhancing one’s business with a suite of tried and tested tools. It certainly does not provide the answer to every business’ woes, and it cannot, since every business has its own problems and own ways of finding customized solutions. However, lean manufacturing works best when it is accompanied by a large amount of common sense and the drive to achieve. Lean manufacturing training is not a recipe for business problems but can point one in the direction of implementing this business philosophy for success.

Having said that, it is important to note that just as everything in life comes with its own limitations, so does lean manufacturing. It would not be right for a company adopting the principles of lean manufacturing to presume that it is a panacea for all its ills and continue to have an uncommitted management team. Even if a business has the right management style and structure, it is still not a candidate for success if it does not provide these people with the business tools to do their job perfectly and bring the company to success. As the head of a business, therefore, you need to have a clear focus and direction of where you are and where you want to be in the next few years.

However, as a business person, you cannot fall prey to every business mantra that is thrown at you, but must adopt and adapt all that you read and learn to your business. Hence, you could come up with a combination of two or more business mantras which could work well for you. By tweaking or fine tuning some aspects of the business philosophies you choose, you could end up with a perfect learning guide that could be the roadmap for your success.

This tweaking is essential, as anyone in business and out of it knows that no two businesses are alike and that all management gurus are individualistic. Hence, if one’s thinking is so individualistic, you can’t expect blanket norms in business—you have to customize.

A business person has to study his market, his place in his market, the effectiveness of his products and services and then apply the principles of lean manufacturing to his unique situation. Only then does lean manufacturing become meaningful to the business user.

A manufacturer’s duty is to produce a product at the right price and the standard of quality, render prompt and thorough customer service. These are areas in which lean manufacturing can be of help to him. A company’s basic aim is to make good money and this can only be achieved by making and marketing good products. This is the bottom line, no matter which business mantra one may adopt.

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During the course of developing online training programs for some of our customers, we came to know about the principles of Lean manufacturing or Lean production, a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.

As a manager, I see that the origin of all wastage is human beings. Our productivity as individuals is directly tied to our emotional state and how we spend our time. In this context I found Steven Covey’s seven habits to be a good diagnostic as well as prescriptive tool to address human wastage and to promote effectiveness, which is the very essence of Lean.

Let’s take Time. How do we view it, in the first place? To paraphrase, Anthony Robbins, the popular motivational guru, time is emotion! How we view time is all about what emotional state we are in. If we are in a positive state, time flies or else it drags. Covey gives a useful categorization of how we spend time in terms of urgency and importance.

If we can start by eliminating or at least minimizing activities in quadrant III and IV and increase the ones in quadrant II, we will reduce the “Important-Urgent” crises in life and become more effective people, contributing value to ourselves and our organizations.

We found that if we spend more time and effort with employees to make them more productive, the systems and procedures will yield many times over.

If you are interested to know how much you know about Lean, take a free quiz.

Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO