ABSTRACT
Implementing Lean Cross-Functional Processes The success of the early adopters in applying lean principles, tools, and practices primarily to production/operations physical processes is in large part because the barriers to lean improvements in these process areas are contained within only one or possibly two “stove-pipe” bureaucracies. The cross-functional processes that have undergone lean improvements in some companies implementing Lean Production systems include:
Lean quality management Lean maintenance Lean new product introduction Lean design and engineering Lean accounting
Employing lean principles, tools, and practices in these processes provides an opportunity to apply lean principles within processes as well as to link several processes in a lean flow. In lean systems, the focus is on improving the organization into a set of interlocking, interdependent lean processes. Without an organizationwide lean process perspective, any lean process can be rendered inefficient and ineffective by being linked to or constrained by an upstream or downstream process or
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processes operating with a traditional mass production (nonlean) design. The next challenge on the path to achieving a truly lean enterprise is to attain lean linkage and flow between all organization processes, including management, information/ support, and physical processes. Often, however, even in companies experiencing success in the transformation to lean of these first five cross-functional processes, they generally are not effectively supported by information systems, or the information systems supporting them are not based in integrated systems and central data. I will discuss these processes further in this section, defining the outline of process requirements for these processes from a lean perspective. I will eventually assign the task of improving them to specific cross-functional teams in the project.
