Lean Leaders’ Circle reveals key enablers for IT with Lean and Six Sigma

Qualitative research conducted under the Oracle Lean Leaders Circle’s initial programme, found that IT and business mapping tools and end-to-end business process understanding are critical enablers, while people are a bigger problem than IT. The Circle, which formed just eight months ago, comprises of Oracle, the Cardiff Business School’s LERC, and the manufacturers GE Healthcare, GE Oil & Gas and James Walker – all three selected for their considerable success in implementing lean principles. Andrew Spence, director for lean supply chain management at Oracle, says: “We recognised that a lot of our customer are using Lean and Six Sigma, and latterly the two together, to improve business performance – and that’s similar to what we’re trying to do. But they’re not being integrated. “IT is not involved in the small local process changes characterised by Lean & Six Sigma. The result is the creation of local stand-alone systems to meet specific needs, which runs against the principals of Lean and the need to optimise processes from end to end, and it runs against the principals of integrated information systems. “Hence the project to bring them together, share some of the tools from Lean, Six Sigma and IT and drive the development of better tools and methodologies.” Ben Waller, senior research associate at LERC, makes the point that Lean practioners have traditionally viewed IT with suspicion, but adds, “that’s just not sustainable”. Says Waller: “So we wanted to look at how companies on the Lean journey could better use IT, and how IT could be more responsive to business needs – how IT could be better used and how IT people could ensure that processes are lean before they put IT in.” He gives the example of GE Healthcare. “We took Lean Value Stream Mapping and applied that for their end-to-end supply chains. Then we adapted it to put the focus on the IT systems throughout that value chain – where they, where not, where there is currently manual intervention and so on.” LERC’s team also did the same with Four Field Mapping, adapting that to look at the IT factor. “It was about doing the analysis to find the process inputs and outputs and match that to appropriate IT tools and system designs,” says Waller. Oonagh Evans, master blackbelt lean leader at GE Healthcare, says that is was a transformation from the discreet Lean Sigma projects for which the company has been renowned. “Integrating Lean and IT meant a focus on wing-to-wing processes. IT is built into all of these, so we were looking to identify where we could improve them by using IT in a lean approach.” She explains: “The classic problem is that kaizen is continuous improvement, meaning small changes all the time, whereas IT wants a defined user specification up-front. We decided to get our IT groups involved in our Lean action workouts to get the best of both – so they understand the issues, provide solutions and use the workouts as the basis for longer term IT solutions.” Says Waller: “What we’ve seen is that most of delays in a supply chain process aren’t about the flow of product, but the flow of information. So for Lean to succeed, there can’t be an IT change or a Lean change on its own – there has to be a whole business approach. “Most systems still operate in a silo fashion, but for this to work, scheduling, manufacturing, the warehouse and delivery have to be operated as an end-to-end process. So best practice requires that an IT person sits on Lean projects and that there’s a new focus on business processes right across the supply chain and across all functions.” The Oracle Lean Leaders Circle’s next project will be about developing project management tools and practices for deploying Lean/IT change. “So we’ll be looking at the tools, what it means in terms of overall project management, the training – and bringing IT into a process that works properly,” says Waller. “We need to think of information in the same way we think of materials,” says Spence. “That is, we need to ensure that both flow through our businesses without interruption. IT has a key role to play in every process transformation in enabling the operation of most processes in manufacturing and the back office.” Oracle and LERC are now looking for additional manufacturers to come forward and participate in this phase.