ABSTRACT
It would seem pretty logical that the way to start the implementation of Lean in your business would be to train everyone in Lean. There are lots of Lean courses around, and in some countries (such as Australia) there are very generous government subsidies, which make these courses very cheap, or even free. Therefore, why not just choose a training provider and sign up everyone for a course? In our experience, this is a very ineffective, time-consuming, and costly way to get started (even allowing for training
subsidies). The aim of training is to impart knowledge, and the outcome is that trainees gain a qualification or certificate to recognize that they have acquired that knowledge. However, knowledge is only useful if it is applied and, in our experience, very few Lean training courses go on to deliver real Lean change. This is because other barriers such as the culture of the organization prevent change from occurring. Also, training a number of people and expecting them to implement improvement tends to, at best, lead to uncoordinated, random, small-scale improvement that will not address the key issues that prevent your business from growing (e.g., the kind of issues Mike Walsh was facing at Branach Manufacturing in Chapter 1).
