ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: This article addresses the key issues that relate to implementing organisational change and in particular ‘Lean manufacturing’.The author uses ‘Lean’ and variants of ‘continuous improvement’ as examples to illustrate the inability for most organisations to create the culture that will sustain ‘lean’ and any other programme of organisational improvement. Failing to plan for change equates to planning to fail. Currently, too much attention is focused wrongly on the technical aspects and tools and techniques rather than the ability to create a self sustaining culture where change is seen as the norm and where resistance to change is never an option.

MORE INFO: Lean & Mean: A Cultural Issue This article addresses the key issues that relate to implementing organisational change and in particular ‘Lean manufacturing’.The author uses ‘Lean’ and variants of ‘continuous improvement’ as examples to illustrate the inability for most organisations to create the culture that will sustain ‘lean’ and any other programme of organisational improvement. Failing to plan for change equates to planning to fail. Currently, too much attention is focused wrongly on the technical aspects and tools and techniques rather than the ability to create a self sustaining culture where change is seen as the norm and where resistance to change is never an option. Just imagine what you could achieve if your organisational culture welcomed change. Consider how easy it would be to install the training, the techniques, the methodologies and the common language that accompanies any Lean strategy, if the staff at all levels chose to perceive the change as an aid to their work rather than as a hindrance and distraction from their daily, weekly and monthly targets? I’ll make a bold statement “most organisations stand little chance of implementing ‘Lean’ unless they have paid at least equal attention to creating the right culture, the circumstances, the foundation for implementing change”.

PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management

Page number: 18 Word count: 4500

Vol 30 - No 05 - July 2004

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