ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the key points for making it happen and provides some guidelines for consideration. It looks at some “blocking and tackling” issues that all Lean organizations are always focusing on, and aims to compare several general Lean application strategies. Sports analogies to Lean are sometimes used, even though Lean is definitely not an event with a finite timeframe such as a 60-minute game. But the fact is that Lean, and business in general, is a team sport, so sports analogies are often appropriate and effective in clarifying Lean topics. Most of the tools of Lean are mechanisms for surfacing problems. Lean companies experiment their way to progress. Without a solid plan for expanding the transformation, this could inadvertently encourage the creation of the common “spotty Lean” condition where Lean practices are present in only some areas of an organization, but not integrated and evident organization-wide.
