Lean Misconceptions: Why Many Lean Initiatives Fail and How You Can Avoid the Mistakes

It has been reported that about 70% of initiatives fail to achieve desired results. The cause is an unrealistic expectation regarding effort and results and a focus on short-term improvements over long-term capability building. Too many consultants and organisations focus on the tools and the results they can achieve without considering the long-term implications. Success relies on focusing both short-term gains and long-term culture change – using the tools as the mechanism for change versus the objective of the change. Section 1 is about continuous improvement -- why companies do it, the various methods and where they came from, and why they are all too focused on production performance versus organizational capability. Section 2 is about the tools and how they support the underlying principles necessary to achieve long-term capability change/building. The final section is a summary of what readers should do with the new knowledge gained from reading the book – not a checklist or a recipe for success but a call to action to challenge their thinking on Lean, on performance/continuous improvement and to challenge each other, their peers, seniors, subordinates to focus on what matters.