Set a lean culture at a company is a great change. Changes are part of every day life. Changes can be divided into 2 main groups. Individual level and organization level changes. To make changes in organization level is the role and responsibility of managers. Managers have the most important role to set a lean culture in the company. I can tell with many years of experience where managers are not committed or not have lean approach the implementation of lean fails. Only those companies are able to set lean culture where management has lean approach and managers are committed to lean.
Implementing lean culture
Taichi Ohno created the Toyota production system that has many visual appearance as TPS house. However all appearances has one thing in common. The base of the house includes lean culture, lean mindset of people. This is the base of any lean company. Production system covers many different elements as 5S, Just In Time, Jidoka, etc. Among these elements the “glue” is the lean approach of employees. Who else could make systems work than humans? What could be more important than to change people mindset and problem solving skill to lean approach? To make such level of mindset change in the organization should be driven from the top of the organization. Therefore managers have the most important role and biggest responsibility at the start up of a lean cultural change.