LETTER

Sir

A lot of people are waking up to lean manufacturing while in pursuit of operational excellence (Food Manufacture​ October 2006, p30​). So what's the turn-on? Ultimately, it's hunting the money; critical in markets with continuous margin erosion.

Lean is all about: exploiting opportunities; real collaboration; working more smartly; maximum engagement; and creating a dynamic but disciplined environment.

Too many people talk about lean when there is a need to get manufacturing basics in place, to establish day-to-day control where staff are running the day job as well as helping with the improvement effort. Lean is as much about mindset change where anyone and everyone is challenging, as it is about lean tools and techniques.

Scepticism isn't down to jargon, but the way an initiative is introduced as flavour of the month or an add-on, rather than as a strategic priority agenda item, not just at the monthly board meeting, but increasingly as part of the weekly and daily agenda.

Most manufacturers implementing lean effectively put people first and have already established a consistent culture where operational basics are embedded. It has to be commissioned and driven consistently, with things done in the right order and at the right time. We need to collaborate internally across functions, upstream and downstream, and externally with customers and suppliers.

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) has its place as a flag to stimulate appropriate action, but the issue with using OEE as a general performance measure is that it is non-systemic. We should not rely on OEE on its own for measuring how well a business is doing, not only because of the inherent risks identified in the article but because it only measures part of what is required and because of its limited focus on machines or lines. Although OEE has its place and is an excellent barometer of equipment and process performance, it has to be used in conjunction with other key measures, such as lead times, schedule adherence and on-time, in-full delivery to the customer.

Remember why we do lean - money. We need everybody engaged in tracking value. If we do this, having understood and exploited the opportunities, it will create a win-win for everybody. Our people will be more motivated to deliver the required result and our customers will be happy.

Andy Spooner

Account manager

Suiko