{"id":70329,"date":"2017-07-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantechweb.wpengine.com\/blog\/fixing-a-continuous-improvement-effort-that-stalls-and-it-will-stall\/"},"modified":"2021-02-12T13:54:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T18:54:32","slug":"fixing-a-continuous-improvement-effort-that-stalls-and-it-will-stall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lantech.com\/fixing-a-continuous-improvement-effort-that-stalls-and-it-will-stall\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing a Continuous Improvement Effort That Stalls \u2013 and It Will Stall"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n\"Lancaster.jpg\"Lantech<\/a> CEO Jim Lancaster, author of the new Lean Enterprise Institute book “The Work of Management<\/a>“, explains on the latest Lean Blog podcast<\/a> why and how he revitalized improvement tactics and strategy.<\/p>\n

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After years of overseeing and participating in successful continuous improvement (kaizen) events, Lantech CEO Jim Lancaster was listening to an improvement team report results from its latest effort when he had an unsettling d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard this before,\u201d he said, vividly recalling the incident a decade ago. \u201cI\u2019ve heard this problem before and I\u2019ve heard this solution before in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a frank interview, Lancaster tells Lean Blog<\/a> podcast host Mark Graban that he ultimately realized the company was repeating improvement activities that had deteriorated after just a couple of years. As a result, all the work implementing lean management improvements wasn\u2019t hitting the bottom line.<\/p>\n

A star of the early lean movement in the 1990s, Lantech earned acclaim converting operations from wasteful batch production to efficient flow production, dramatically cutting lead times and costs while increasing manufacturing velocity and quality. It freed millions of dollars in inventory. The remarkable results were featured in the Harvard Business Review<\/em> and business best-seller Lean Thinking<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

But like many companies implementing continuous improvement strategies, Lantech struggled over time to sustain gains and improve financial performance significantly.<\/p>\n

In the just-released podcast #283, Lancaster explains how the Louisville, KY maker of stretch wrapping equipment, learned how to sustain continuous improvement activities to spur growth and become much more profitable. The key to revitalizing the program was Lancaster spending months doing frontline work himself. He realized first-hand how variation, which is inevitable in any work environment, caused processes to deteriorate, despite the best continuous improvement efforts.<\/p>\n

As a result, Lantech developed a new daily management system of \u201ccascading, cross-functional, standardized steps\u201d for every employee and executive. The system connects all the value-adding work of the business to support resources that catch and reverse process deterioration immediately every single day.<\/p>\n

Lancaster and Graban discuss:<\/p>\n