Key takeaways
- Choose a lean consulting firm by what it measures, how it builds your people and what is standing on your floor after 90 days. Every firm says it comes from Toyota, so that claim cannot help you choose.
- Ask six questions: What do you measure? How will you build our people? What will exist after 90 days? Can you show me a measured result? How do you help us grow without breaking? Who leads this when you leave?
- The red flag in a first meeting is a conversation that is all tools, kaizen events and cost savings.
- For CEOs, COOs and plant leaders choosing outside help for lean, 5S or operational excellence work.
Every firm says it comes from Toyota
Most consultants learned lean inside companies that were trying to survive, so they learned lean in a cost-cutting model.
I learned it differently. Early on at Toyota, coming from other organizations, I thought everything was about cost savings. Cut, cut, cut, save money. Then I watched us launch a new model vehicle and build growth at an enormous scale, with discipline and standards. That changed how I see lean.
So “we come from Toyota” tells you very little. What tells you something is how a firm answers six questions:
- What do you measure?
- How will you build our people?
- What will exist on our floor after 90 days?
- Can you show me a result you measured?
- How do you help us grow without breaking?
- Who leads this when you leave?
A firm that learned the system will answer all six without reaching for a slide.
Six questions to ask a lean consulting firm before you sign
1. What do you measure?
Toyota measures very specific things: safety, quality, delivery, cost and morale. And it is sequential. If you are safe, you can produce quality, you can deliver on time, and cost will take care of itself. Cost is the dependent, the lagging indicator of what we do.
- Good answer: safety and quality come first, and cost is treated as the result.
- Red flag: the first meeting is all tools, kaizen events and cost savings.
2. How will you build our people?
At Toyota, it was all about building people and their capability. It was about teaching people how to solve problems. If you can empower everyone, every day, to solve the problems of the business, you improve, and cost takes care of itself.
Ask the firm how it trains. When I was trained at Toyota, my team leader explained the process and why it was important. He broke the job down into its key steps. He demonstrated it while stating the key steps. Then he said, come on Izzy, now you get some hands on. He corrected my mistakes, and more importantly, he asked for my feedback.
- Good answer: training happens in a real work area, step by step, with the people who do the work, and their ideas get used. Your team members are the closest to the customer.
- Red flag: training that is mostly slides in a conference room. People retain 10 to 15 percent of what is on a slide.
3. What will exist on our floor after 90 days?
Lean is how you see your operation clearly, so you can stabilize and you can grow. After 90 days you should be able to point to three things that did not exist on day one.
- A true north. I start with a yellow sticky note. Each leader writes down the vision, the mission, two or three core values, three to five metrics and their own role. Less than five percent of a leadership team will write down the same vision statement. If we all think our true north is something different, what we cascade to the workforce is confusion.
- A current state. Where we are today, how far we are from where we want to be, and the biggest gaps.
- A daily routine at the line. A 10-minute tiered huddle, every shift: What broke? What is drifting? What do we fix today?
- Red flag: after 90 days, all you have is a list of kaizen events with no direction and no reason.
4. Can you show me a result you measured?
A lot of organizations think lean is about bottom-line savings. Lean is about top-line growth. So ask for results measured on the line, with a baseline and a time period. Two of ours:
- One pharmaceutical line took its OEE from 32 percent to 53 percent. Its top three causes of downtime fell from 151 hours to 10, and corrective-maintenance downtime on the pilot asset dropped 70 percent. Read what changed.
- At a multi-plant industrial products manufacturer, a priority production line cut scrap from 12.5 percent to 6.5 percent. Read the case study.
- Red flag: a savings figure with no baseline, no measurement period and nobody on your team who agrees with the number.
Companies are finding 20 to 30 percent more capacity or throughput in plants they already own. Measure the capacity you got back, and cost will take care of itself.
5. How do you help us grow without breaking?
When you grow fast, every single weakness in the business multiplies. Lean in the growth phase is about building the operating system that lets you scale without breaking, without the wheels falling off. Ask the firm how it phases the work. This is how I phase it:
- First six months: see clearly and stabilize your operations.
- Next 12 months: standardized work. The way your best people win becomes the way everyone works.
- By 24 months: a tangible operating system that absorbs acquisitions and new sites.
- Red flag: a plan that only cuts.
6. Who leads this when you leave?
At Toyota, the leaders would ask me, all right, Izzy, who’s the next you? If we do not create the next level of leaders, we begin to lose team members.
Many companies have restarted lean two, three, four, even five times, and lost the hearts and minds of their people along the way. Teams respond to what leaders reward, what they tolerate and what they ignore. If leaders do not change their behaviors, why should team members change theirs?
- Good answer: your supervisors are teaching the skill behind the work well before the engagement ends. The goal is knowledge transfer.
- Red flag: the consultants run every event and your supervisors watch.
Do you need an outside lean consulting firm at all?
Not always. Bring in outside help when your continuous improvement team is doing good work and nobody above them is leading it.
Not long ago, a very enthusiastic continuous improvement group walked me deep into the factory, into a back room they called their obeya, the big room. There was a beautiful value stream map. It was about a year old, with no link to the vision, the goals or the KPIs that mattered to the business. I asked how many times the leadership team came in to make decisions. The answer was, they don’t.
- Your most passionate lean people are selling lean upward, over and over, almost like door-to-door salespeople.
- The improvement work is not connected to the KPIs of the business, the customer or the vision.
- Lean has been restarted more than once.
If those sound familiar, the work needs leadership more than it needs another tool. Lean needs to be led, and the leadership team has to lead it.
How Incito answers these six questions
Incito Consulting Group helps growing companies and enterprises build the operating system behind their growth. Here is how we answer the questions above.
- Who leads the work: I am Incito’s President and CEO. I learned lean at NUMMI and Toyota, and I am a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt.
- Where we have worked: clients in more than 20 countries and 25 industries.
- What we measure: safety, quality, delivery, cost and morale, in that order.
- What we can show you: the two results above and more in our case studies, which name clients by industry only to protect their confidentiality.
- What we offer: lean consulting services from true north strategy to 5S, standardized work and daily management.
The first consultation is complimentary. Talk to a lean consultant.
Frequently asked questions
How do you choose a lean consulting firm?
Ask six questions: What do you measure? How will you build our people? What will exist on our floor after 90 days? Can you show me a result you measured? How do you help us grow without breaking? Who leads this when you leave? Choose the firm that puts safety, quality and your people ahead of cost, and whose results were measured on the line.
What should a lean consultant accomplish in the first 90 days?
Three things that did not exist on day one: a true north the whole leadership team agrees on, a clear current state with the biggest gaps named, and a 10-minute tiered huddle at the line every shift. A list of kaizen events on its own is not enough.
When should we bring in outside lean consultants if we already have a continuous improvement team?
When the team is doing good work and nobody above them is leading it. The signs: improvement work is not tied to the business KPIs, leaders rarely come to review it and make decisions, and lean has been restarted more than once.
What results should we expect from a lean consulting firm?
Results measured on the line, with a baseline and a time period. At Incito clients, one pharmaceutical line took OEE from 32 percent to 53 percent, and a priority production line cut scrap from 12.5 percent to 6.5 percent. Companies are finding 20 to 30 percent more capacity or throughput in plants they already own.
What is the biggest red flag when hiring a lean consultant?
A first meeting that is all tools, kaizen events and cost savings. Cost is the lagging indicator of safety, quality and delivery. A firm that leads with cost learned lean as cost cutting.
Cost cutting shrinks you. Lean grows you. Choose the firm that can show you the difference on your own floor.
Sources
- My video: Lean Isn’t a Diet. It’s a Growth System. Incito Consulting Group on YouTube.
- OEE from 32% to 53% on a pharmaceutical line, Incito case study.
- How a priority production line reduced scrap from 12.5% to 6.5%, Incito case study.