Differences between lean thinkers and traditional manufacturersLean thinking is the starting point of lean manufacturing. Lean thinkers are the key resource for any lean manufacturer on its success of operation. There are many differences in the thinking patterns to the traditional manufacturing methods. A lean thinker poses some key differences to the traditional manufacturers and managers. Lean thinkers are the prime movers of the lean organization. They share their knowledge with the other team members and use them to get the desired results. Everyone in the organization are actively participated in the decision making process. On the other hand traditional managers make the decisions and ask the subordinates to do the job. Subordinates follow these decisions because they have to follow them and not with a great concern on the desired result. Lean thinkers identify problems as possibilities for improvement. Traditional managers hate problems and they do not want to face the real problems. They only focus on the result they want to get not on the process in which these are achieved. Therefore in the traditional management context problems are never solved but bypassed when occurred to achieve short term goals. But in the lean context every problem is analyzed in detail and then root causes for those problems are identified and eliminated from the system. Then the problems will be sorted forever. Lean manufacturers treat the full organization as a single unit. The customer is expecting the outcome from the organization itself and not from the individual departments or people. Therefore the decisions are always better for the organization. In contrast traditional managers want to make individual departments efficient. This might not give any good result to the customer. This is known as the sub optimization in lean manufacturing. Lean thinkers are change facilitators. They will change for the betterment of the organization. Unlike traditional management method of “management by exception” which proposes not to change anything if there is no problem, lean thinkers will change things around for better results even they seems to be working fine. Team working is another key aspect of lean. Team formation and using it to the objectives of the organization are very important lean concepts. This will build the synergy in the organization and make the work smooth. Lean thinkers continuously learn and update themselves. They will lead the lean transformation and importantly the mental aspect of it. They also will facilitate the communication in the organization. Feedback loop in particular will be facilitated by the lean thinkers at least in the initial stages of lean implementations. These are only few of the features of lean thinkers in lean manufacturing context in comparison with traditional thinking managers and manufacturers. But I believe these are very important features. |
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