Page 25 - AIMA : Foundation Day Souvenir

IN FOr lEAN
Building a lean culture is about developing competence and behaviour in people to see waste, solve problems, and make improvements. Winner of this year's 'AIMA-Dr Ram Tarneja Award for Best Article in Indian Management 2022'
Sanjeev Baitmangalkar, Stratmann Consulting
Sustainability. Corporate responsibility. Business purpose. Social responsibility. Call it what you like; competent boards can no longer afford to put ESG—environment, social, and corporate governance—issues on e back burner.
Not long ago, these subjects—ranging from freak weather events to demands for a higher minimum wage and the diversity of board members—were widely considered to have no place on a board agenda. Now, however, directors ignore them at their peril.
I have often been asked, “How did you build the lean culture?” Simply said, culture is ‘how we do what we do’ or ‘the way things are done in an organisation’. Some also define company culture as a shared set of goals, values, attitudes, and practices that characterise an organisation.
A successful company culture is one that can be accepted easily or embraced by the newest member to the MD or CEO. In this article, I will share with you some important things that helped me build a lean culture in my organisation.
Over time, every company develops some sort of culture that may include strategy, goals, etc. But it is really about attitudes and practices that can answer the question, “What does it feel like to work in a particular company?”When people ask me, “How did you change traditional culture to lean?” it indicates their intent to change or transform from a traditional production company to a just-in-time (JIT) manufacturer or service provider. This transformation is not casual, as a lean company thinks in a manner that is exactly the opposite of a traditionally managed one, when it comes to operational approaches, underlying attitudes, and practices. Traditional companies are structured into departments that make them produce in batches, while lean companies are structured in value streams that enable flow of value to
customer on demand.
Two traditionally managed companies might not have the same culture. Yet because of their approach to marketing, production, and functional structure (batch production structure) they may share many similarities. The list of thinking or process examples could be endless, and underscore the point that to become lean the traditional organisation has to change. The challenge is enormous and to build a lean culture, you must first build a lean company.
This massive change is not an overnight job. Building lean culture is not a fly by night operation, it is not about fixing broken down processes or doing some kind of rejig. It is not something that can be subcontracted to middle managers or below. It has to be led by the CEO or business owner from the front. Transforming to become lean is not a mechanistic thing; it is
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