Mark Woeppel on Management and Execution

This is probably old news, but I just came across an article citing the 2007 Industry Week/MPS Survey of Manufacturers, saying that less than 2% of Lean Manufacturing initiatives achieve their objectives, and less than a quarter achieve significant results. Over 70% of US manufacturers have adopted Lean.

“Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s working according to plan…” cites the author.

Managers seem to employing these techniques for the wrong reasons. The survey shows that market strategies are build around quality and service. Most of the lean tools are geared towards driving time from the system.

The Theory of Constraints continues to demonstrate superior performance in dimensions the customers care about; lead time and reliability. As a method of continuous improvement, it has no peer. A study by Mabin and Balderstone report that using ToC, organizations achieved a mean lead time reduction of 70% and an improvement to on time delivery performance by over 40%. Coupled with short implementation times, often less than 90 days, dramatic results are reported over and over and over.

Moreover, Theory of Constraints implementations actually improve the bottom line performance, doubling profitability in many implementations.

The article also cites that 14% of manufacturers are implementing ToC, up from 3% in 2007. Managers are starting to wake up to the power of the theory of constraints. Are those managers working for your competitor?