I recently supported a plant that started the journey to lean, but stubbed its toe along the path. The leaders held kaizen blitzes, but did not complete the lean implementation. They failed to:

• Address flow and material handling issues resulting from the kaizen; and

• Deal with unforeseen equipment reliability problems and training deficiencies.

As I began to work with the teams, the experience provided me with a good refresher on why it is so important to take care of the last five percent. Unfortunately, this phenomenon occurs more frequently than we like to admit. When we fail to "take care of the last five percent," we never achieve the expected gains and we don’t create the necessary buy-in.

Why does this happen? Well, typically we conduct great kaizen blitz events and we make the moves as planned. We start doing the right things – creating a list of open actions and making corrections. As time goes on, however, we often lose sight of the last items on the list and we fail to correct the new issues that result from our kaizen efforts.

To read the full column, click on the link below:

http://www.advancedmanufacturing.com/Jan05/parting.htm