Continuous Improvement Development Guide, PHASE 6: Keeping Momentum

Even though this endeavor you have been working on to build a continuous improvement culture is commonly called a “Lean journey”, the name is not entirely accurate. A journey implies an end. It is more like an adventure or an exploration. Regardless of what you call it, though, if you are successful at it you will eventually uncover the great paradox of creating a business management system that drives a continuous improvement culture. By definition, you can never finish building your system. Because it is so focused on continuous improvement, the structure will not just uncover opportunities with your production and support processes. It will identify ways to improve itself.

That is the key characteristic of this phase. The journey becomes self-powered. While there are still lessons and development gates in this phase, there is a noticeable change in the feel of the system. It no longer takes in more energy than it puts off. Going back to the analogy of the investment property from earlier, this phase is the equivalent of when the rent outpaces the costs of ownership. The rental unit becomes profitable. This phase is marked by a significant reduction in the effort it takes to roll out new ideas and a major increase in the system’s payoff.

Once your company reaches this phase, the majority of your organizations will be operating under the business management system, and will have a full kaizen calendar. Employees will be able to transfer throughout the company and immediately understand how the new department is run. The fact that everyone is involved, though, does not mean that you can coast on your previous efforts. It is very important to keep up the momentum.

The bottom line is that this is not exactly a steady state phase, as the improvement line should still be steep. It is more of the saturation phase where everyone is involved in Lean, and the focus is on continually strengthening the culture.