Beyond Lean: Lean is not “Cool” after lean Cap | In the lean, the criterion of validity (the “lean” character of something) is given by its ability to generate value (positive formulation), or in other words (Poke-yoke of “it read”) by not generating waste (negative formulation). In its industrial-manufacturing application, “x” is lean if “x” generates consumption value.
It may seem that we have reached the pinnacle of intelligence in management and process engineering, but in this forum, we aspire to more.
From my perspective, there is life after “lean” for several reasons. Among them, because everything said is nothing more than a truism. The theoretical body of “lean manufacturing” is only composed of a tautological statement without the ability to generate a complex theoretical system (it is worth what gives value) and a set of techniques, practical resources, a set of behaviors to ensure progress and avoid error. That is the limitation of the “lean”, its impossibility of evolution, its theoretical poverty, its character as a set of unquestionable practical instructions.
As we apply the system, we need an idea, a fruitful concept with some value in the history of thought. And not just a no-brainer.
Lean Is Great… Until It Isn’t.
Perhaps the culture that Doctor Obvious so finely describes, the Japanese, is a culture in which the “lean” fits like a glove. Perhaps the critical character of the West makes us try to see beyond the “lean”. In any case, I am not Japanese and I believe that the richness (value) of Western culture is that, its evolutionary capacity, its adaptability, its energy and its capacity for progress.
With the “lean” we have assumed a burden, a ballast and an anchor that, although it ensures our existence, prevents us from progressing. Any discontinuity is a betrayal of “lean”, a blasphemy of the bushido of the “lean” samurai.
And I am afraid that this will be the epilogue of the “lean”, like that of the “samurai”, a beautiful epic stamp in evolutionary development. An antique, incorporated into future thinking but dissolved in it, obsolete, outdated and old-fashioned.
Target: After Lean. Enter
As it begins to be a bit boring to criticize lean and as there are already others (more interested than me) in characterizing, improving and detailing it, I would like to go a step further and open another front of discussion. Look from another perspective.
After-Lean needs a name and content; it is outlined but not yet. We must take that step. Fill with value, configure and draw the horizon of which we speak. It will not be the final step, that is not possible, but it is a step that must be taken.
Because some or some do not stop saying that the “Lean” lacks something. Because we intuit that it is a moment towards something more. We recognize its values and utilities, but we read defects and incompleteness.
They want it to be more explicit, the lean is more wrapping than a gift. It’s self-hype and it’s consulting business. It is good in its essence, but it is also one more stage, a moment to overcome.
So with the promise of something better, let’s get on track. Does anyone sign up? Next stop: The values of After Lean.