Lean management was introduced in Malta over 20 years ago. A number of lean training programmes followed, which mostly addressed the manufacturing and project/construction sectors.
People and organisations who have attended these training programmes have said they thought their enterprise was lean but in reality it is not – “we can see how much waste is still lying around”.
Others had heard of lean concepts, thought they had grasped their meaning, only to discover that this wasn’t enough. Staff from big organisations say it’s their top management executives who should be attending this kind of training.
The state of affairs in the three main industrial sectors – manufacture, project/construction and service industries – does not look bright.
All three sectors suffer the same plague: excessive waste in all operational and support processes – lack of output value to the customer.
The second industrial revolution started silently over two decades ago. But Malta seems so attached to the principles, strategies and philosophy of the first, invented by Adam Smith and Frederick Taylor a long time ago. This is a considerable problem, because principles of the first industrial revolution are rather dated, to say the least.
Many organisations reason that in a Mediterranean country with a Mediterranean culture, this state of affairs is normal. But this is not the case.
There is nothing wrong with a colourful and character-full Mediterranean culture, mentality and behaviour. It opens wide the doors to lean practices, so much in need of solid, creative thinking.
The only problem is to find a way to marry a Mediterranean style with lean practices – which, although hard, is not impossible to achieve.
Techniques, disciplines and tools can be learnt, obtained or purchased. This is not possible with culture. Modern, industrial lean culture can only be built in-house, within the organisation, by those concerned – starting from topmanagement.
This is the hardest and trickiest part of the transition to lean management: changing a culture. The Smith and Taylor heritage is very difficult to part with. It has taken generations to digest and implement the principles of the first industrial revolution and it will take years or decades to digest those of the second.
Our industrial DNA is heavily polluted with traditional principles. We are still in love with the mass and batch production mentality, with traditional planning, supervision and control – order and efficiency, roles, authorities and job descriptions, rules and procedures.
Even hairdressers, retailers and housewives have fallen in love with mass production principles. The resistance to lean management remains strong.
We need to change our skin. We need to transform man-agers into coaches. We need to build a new breed of people – people who are driven by value principles and not by job principles.
We need to create dedicated people who are ready to reconceive, improve and perfect the processes they handle, understand and should be responsible for – in short, people who enjoy working, reap the benefits and then feel a sense of satisfaction.
We need to have more new millennium craftsmen in their workshops, more traders in close contact with customers – people to whom pride, professional and work dignity, usurped for over a century by labour division and top-control practices, will be returned.
In other words – people who can think lean.