رهبری ناب- اصول بنیادی و کاربرد آنها

Lean production systems (LPS) have become state of the art in today's production facilities. But still, few enterprises succeed in maintaining a sustainable continuous improvement process (CIP). In many LPS, solely methods and tools are in focus of the implementation. But they merely represent the superficial elements of LPS. The actual key success factor is the involvement of employees in daily improvement. This can be achieved through a different way of leadership, the lean leadership. Although the importance of lean leadership has already been emphasized by many authors, so far no consistent structure or definition of this approach exist. Therefore, a literature study has been carried out, aimed at identifying the relevant principles of lean leadership. A subsequent survey reveals the application of lean leadership and points out future possibilities for improvement. The majority of participants confirms the particular importance of lean leadership and claim to apply almost all its elements in their enterprises. But the results also indicate that some elements have been misinterpreted and others are not used as thoroughly as they should.

Lean production has evolved to the state of the art in manufacturing. [1] The results of an international survey showed, that 80 % of the participants claim to use the principles of lean production systems (LPS). More than half finished the implementation and improve their LPScontinuously. [2] Other studies show comparable results.[3-4] However, in many enterprises the results do not meet the initial expectations or do not last very long. [5-7] Often, people focus on methods, but methods are just the visible part of LPS. Key factor for the sustainable success are the employees. [6][8-9] Methods and tools are very important but they cannot achieve any results if leaders do not have a deeper understanding of lean. [10] The implementation of methods and tools is indeed the far easier part of LPS implementation. However, the biggest challenge is the change in behavior and mindset of employees and leaders. [11] Main difference between lean and former mass production approaches is the role of employees. The separation of white and blue-collar workers does not exist in lean production. The task of optimizing processes is more decentralized in order to operative issues. The employees are the first ones who notice deviations from the standard and they know best about common defects and disturbances. [12] The real scope of LPS implementation can be described (figure 1). [7] It names four relevant aspects of lean: philosophy, process, people and partners as well as problem solving. Most enterprises have focused on the process and have eliminated waste by using one piece flow, error proofing, standardized work and many more. But they have neglected the other three P of lean. [6-7] This is also described as toolbox lean [6] because people thought they could pick some single tools and have thereby implemented a lean production system.The aim is to continuously improve every process every day and to achieve a so-called continuous improvement process (CIP). Of course, employees cannot shoulder this alone. Often, they are strictly bound to their workplace and they usually work in standardized work systems that do not leave much time for idle or improvement. Therefore, the organizational structure has to provide time and trained employees for improvement.This is often solved by establishing the hancho position. The hancho controls the improvement actions on the shop floor level. [1]This change on the operational level has a strong impact on the daily cooperation between shop floor workers and operative management. In the past, management instructed the workers in their improvement actions.Now, operative employees have to point out improvement possibilities, too. Therefore, leadership needs more employee participation and employees need basic knowledge about lean production systems. Otherwise, improvement actions are not focused and will not benefit the LPS. Since employee participation and employee knowledge are the foundation for lean leadership, they have been described in earlier papers [13-15]. Several authors acknowledge the importance of lean leadership in LPS implementation [5-7][11][16-17]. Lean leadership seems to be the missing link between lean production with its widely known methods and a self-improving enterprise with a true CIP. [11][6] However, no consistent approach for the structure, principles and methods exists so far. This paper shows different approaches for leadership in lean production and combines them to an integrated lean leadership system.

The sustainable implementation of lean production systems requires a change in the daily cooperation of workers and leaders. In the present paper, a new definition of lean leadership was derived and five fundamental principles were identified. The application of these principles was evaluated by an international survey among 91 enterprises.In order to achieve a better improvement culture, the lean leader needs to be a role model for his employees.The importance of self-development has apparently not been identified so far. This principle is the foundation for the development of employees and enables the lean leader to conduct a convincing gemba management. The importance of gemba seems to be widely known but enterprises might need new methods for the specific application. The five golden gemba rules give lean leaders a first impression and guideline for applying gemba. Most enterprises have some sort of employee qualification but they should integrate methods like coaching and mentoring in their existing qualification systems. Especially in Germany, hoshin kanri is scarcely known. Existing metrics and reward systems should be redesigned regarding lean leadership principles. In summary, enterprises have realized the importance of lean leadership but have not adapted their leadership system so far. In order to truly understand the actual enterprises further analysis is necessary.