| | DECEMBER 201819Consultants ReviewThe key is to ensure all the employees know how to fish and always improve their fishing ability, as there is always a new opportunity, large or smallis a general statement than I want a green apple. Defining LEAN like a method and tool that Toyota developed, limits the applicability of LEAN when it is taken to other industries or other sectors of the society. For example, in the IT industry, we work towards re-engineering, migrating a dinosaur model to a digital platform, and we don't produce cars. Our services are customer oriented, specific to certain situations to standardize for our way of working. Problem 2.Lean as the means to an end and not the endAn exciting episode about the famous Swedish athlete Carolina Kluft will help us better understand this point. Carolina retired from professional sports in 2008. From the year 2001 to 2007, she was the best athlete. She won three world championship titles, one Olympic gold medal, and two European championships. Kluft often said the reason behind her success is that she thinks competing is `fun.' She emphasized her focus was always to achieve a goal ­ instead of focusing on the means. Coming back to the corporate environment, if lean is defined as methods, the use of these methods tend to become a goal in itself.The means and end narrative is incomplete without mentioning two important factors that go along with it ­ resource and flow efficiency. Resource EfficiencyMany organizations are focused on resource efficiency because high capacity utilization is seen as the main goal. Resource efficiency is a traditional form of efficiency and involves utilizing resources as much as possible by dividing an incoming job into smaller tasks. Resource efficiency is a measurement of how much a resourceis utilizedabout a specific period. Flow Efficiency:Flow efficiency is the measurement of how much a flow unit is processed during a specific period. The periodis defined from the time a need is identifieduntil it is satisfied. In the service industry, the flow unit is often the customer delight which is met through different activities. Which way to go? Resource (or) Flow efficiencyThe nature of the business deter-mines the mode. E.g., we can expe-rience in a local health center how center "A" satisfies a person's need through improved flow efficiency with 67 percent compared to another Center "B" where it is just 20 percent because of a complex process.Realizing a Lean operation StrategyLean is an objective to prioritize high flow efficiency over resource efficiency. The intention must be to eliminate, reduce, and manage varia-tions primarily to increase efficiency. We can refine the initial question about lean further to `what means we can use to realize a lean opera-tional strategy?' Realizing a lean operation strategy is not just about improving the action flow. It is also about continuously improving in dif-ferent ways. New knowledge, under-standing, experience and learning and how to meet those needs as ef-ficiently as possible. From a static perspective, the usual question that would be asked is "What have we done during this project?" A dynamic organization would ask "how do we ensure that we learn something new every day?"LEAN to fish (or) learn to fish?!The Lean approach raises the key question `how should we think about improvement'? When an organization identifies a problem, its goal is to catch the `big fish' investing certain resources. Regardless of huge investments to diagnose, the project is finally finished when the `fish' is caught. However, there are always going to be problems. The key is to ensure all the employees know how to fish and always improve their fishing ability, as there is always a new opportunity, large or small. What is significant is the organization's ability to fish. The self-fishing organization is the ultimate purpose to call it LEAN.
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