Many companies just getting started with lean and even more who are on the lean journey are achieving remarkable lean results but not everyone is willing to publicize these results or talk about them openly. Why?

First, lets look at the kind of results businesses are getting with lean implementation. We can look at them at the kaizen level, at the cell level, and at the value stream level.

Kaizen results are everywhere. Clutter removed, inventory reduced, throughput increased, turnaround time and lead time decreased, changeover time lowered, quality improved, machine efficiency increased, on-time delivery improved, space reduced, and costs reduced. And these dramatic results are achieved in 5 days or less via Kaizen Events! This is significant improvement...and fast!

Cell results are also being achieved. When operations are reconfigured from functional to one-piece flows and measures are established, we also see the same kinds of quality, inventory, lead time, space, on-time delivery, safety, and cost improvements.

Value Stream results are equally dramatic, although a bit less prominent, and take a little longer to realize. This may be due to the measures across an entire value stream being more difficult to establish and track systematically. Plus these results tend to cut across department boundaries. Departments are still, for the most part, the preferred organizational structure...and these "monuments" are difficult to change as well. Departments still seem to dominate by commanding much more management attention than Value Streams.

Why are we finding it so difficult to talk about these results publically? They're certainly profound, yet even when a concerted effort is made to get these numbers made visible they're met with some skepticism or even a lack of interest. We tend to hang onto our more traditional measures, which are generally departmentalized and organizational. Lean accounting seems to still be a long way off for most of us.

Example: one division of a major US defense contractor has been implementing lean since 2002. This division has a dozen value streams, all of which have been achieving dramatic results every year. When the VSLs (Value Stream Leaders) were asked by the Operations Excellence Office (lean and six sigma) to post their baselines and report year-end results vs. that baseline, they complied the first year, but asked that these numbers not be widely shared, even within the division or the company!

In another example from a company in a completely different industry...healthcare... a similar scenario. This company had implemented a one-piece flow cell, measured the baseline performance of this cell, and then, using the same metrics, measured performance one year later. Results were again dramatic, but the plant manager asked these be kept strictly confidential, and not shared with anyone outside of the plant.

So what is going on here? It appears that we are very reluctant to change from our traditional top-down way of organizing (primarily by department), of budgeting, and of reporting results. This reluctance forces us to keep our "normal" way of measuring performance, of setting goals, and of reporting...somewhat at the expense of the heroic achievements being made in parts of the business going lean. And we all have heard of the difficulty of translating the lean improvements to the bottom line.

Yet there is some light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The Kaizen, cell, and value stream results are genuine and deserve at least equal (if not more) attention. We need to better display these important results and pay more management attention to both the results and how they are being achieved. It's time to break our old paradigms and start reporting (and thinking) lean!

See Lean Results for some actual measured numbers.