Muscat: ‘Lean Management’ is a relentless pursuit to eliminate “waste” in all forms. This means anything that consumes resources and does not add value to the organization or its customers should be eliminated or simplified. A company pursuing Lean aims to achieve ‘flow’ in every activity right from customer requirement gathering to order fulfillment and cut down lead time and cost by eliminating wasteful activities i.e. activities that add a burden of time and cost but no value as perceived by customers. Born at Ford in the early 1900s and later perfected at Toyota, Lean played a crucial role in Japan’s post-World War economic miracle and to this day it is at the heart of Japan’s competitiveness. Some of the benefits of Lean are a dramatic reduction in lead time, a significant increase in productivity, improvement in quality, and inventory turnover resulting in superior customer satisfaction and higher return on investment.

The foundation of the Toyota Production System (which is synonymous with Lean) is the absolute elimination of waste. Oh no, who is considered the father of Lean elucidates the two pillars for such a system as just-in-time and autonomation i.e. automation with a human touch. Just-in-time means the manufacturing systems are set up in such a way that the right parts reach the assembly line at the right time in the right quantity. He argues that a company establishing such flow can approach zero inventory. The reason why Toyota pushed just-in-time as a fundamental pillar may be traced back to the post-World War II era when Japan was reeling under a decimated economy with very limited resources. Therefore it was very essential for them to make the best of whatever resources were available.

The other pillar of TPS is autonomation. This is not to be confused with simple automation. The idea originated with the invention of auto-activated weaving machines by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota. The looms stopped instantly if any one of the weft threads broke. Because such a device could distinguish between normal and abnormal conditions, defective products were not produced. Autonomation hinges on giving human intelligence to the machine so that the simple movements of the human operator are handled by autonomous machines. So what is the relationship between just-in-time and autonomation, the two pillars of TPS? Ohno uses the analogy of a baseball team to explain this. Autonomation, he says, corresponds to the skills and talent of the individual players while just-in-time is the teamwork involved in reaching an agreed-upon objective.

In today’s context, lean has permeated across industry boundaries from airline to semiconductor. And it has generated dramatic shareholder value across the board. Lean is embraced not only of philosophy and true north but also as a methodological framework that can be systematically implemented to bring about world-class performance. In the Oman context, lean has achieved mainstream recognition due to the pioneering work done by the Oil & Gas industry followed by many other industries including Private, Public, and Government sectors where it has led to dramatic benefits to business and their stakeholders. Some of the examples include more than 50% reduction in lead time for oil production, 80% reduction in turn-around time for employee payroll processing, 30% increase in manpower productivity. Lean holds immense potential if implemented correctly and can prove to be the secret sauce for sustained wealth creation from enterprises.

SSA Lean Management Webinar: 

SSA International LLC recently conducted a webinar on Lean Digital Transformation. It was a first-of-its-kind event that touched upon the confluence of two business improvement subjects, namely, Lean, which is methodology-driven, and Digital Transformation which is technology-driven. The high point of the webinar was to highlight how crucial it is to bring in Lean Thinking while deploying Digital Transformation, and how can an organization synergize both these concepts to create business value.

In today’s interconnected world, digital transformation is no longer a choice but a necessity. However, it is also paramount for an organization to re-look their processes with a lean lens, else one may end up sub-optimizing the process i.e. take up a bad process and automate it, thus making it worse. Hence, bringing in the concept of Lean Thinking & improving customer value delivery is very crucial. In this webinar, SSA propagated the idea of how Lean & Digital transformation can co-exist and presented the practical approaches that the industry can pursue while approaching digital transformation with a Lean lens.

The webinar was attended by over 60 professionals from 7 countries and spurred healthy discussion and debate. The session was led by Mr. Naveen Narayanan, Managing Director, and Mr. Nandhakumar, Sr. VP, SSA International LLC. 

SSA Group, headquartered in Mumbai with regional offices in Oman, UAE, Sri Lanka & Thailand is a global management consultancy with over 20 years of proven track record in the space of strategy, lean and digital transformation. SSA has pioneered Lean thinking in India and has helped over 1000 industries in 20+ countries across the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa in their pursuit of shareholder value creation through business excellence.

About SSA Solutions: 

SSA is a global management consultancy offering bespoke solutions for business improvement aimed at building the competitiveness of an enterprise to achieve profitability, growth, and perpetuity. It was founded in 1999 by N.C. Narayanan (fondly known as NC), a renowned management guru with a missionary zeal to help enterprises scale and prosper. In its journey of over two decades, SSA has made a significant contribution to more than 1000 industries in over 20 countries, representing diverse sectors across government, not-for-profit, public and private sectors.

Over the years, SSA has partnered with its clients offering an array of profit leadership solutions. These solutions have covered interventions such as Strategy Planning, Goal Deployment, Design Optimization, Lean Manufacturing, Supply Chain Improvement, Quality Improvement, Business Process Optimization, and IT Enablement.