Leading Lean Manufacturing Teams

How do high-potential line workers learn leadership skills?

Our client was a university with deep expertise in Lean Manufacturing practices. They consulted with companies on how to improve their processes with Lean. And that meant showing the companies how to build internal Lean Manufacturing Teams.

The problem: Who was going to lead those internal teams? And how to help those new leaders learn to lead manufacturing teams?

Our client already had a curriculum on Lean Manufacturing. Our mandate was to concentrate on creating a Lean Leadership curriculum, along with an implementation strategy for that curriculum.

Analysis Phase

• We collaborated with our university client to identify needs and audience characteristics.
• We also studied our client’s consulting process, to determine how Lean Leadership Training could be integrated into the existing process.

Design Phase

• Our client rolled out Lean Manufacturing by working with top managers first, to identify and select target projects. Then our client went on to work with the target areas as they conducted their projects.  We opted to piggy-back on that process.
  • During the top-management project-selection phase, we added a leader-selection task item. To help managers carry out this task, we created a Leadership-Characteristics Survey that managers could use to identify high-potential team leaders on the manufacturing floor. 
  • During the lean projects phase, our client mentored manufacturing personnel through their first few target projects. We proposed conducting a series of leadership-skills workshop before each of these projects, and then using the projects themselves as a leadership-laboratory where leaders could practice their new leadership skills.
  • To make sure that those new leadership skills were being used appropriately in the target projects, we needed our client’s consultants to act as leadership mentors. To help, we created a set of Observation Checklists that our client’s consultants could use to identify specific behaviors, and offer either positive or corrective feedback.

Development Phase

• We developed Lean Leader Workshops on these topics:
  • Leading and Motivating Teams
  • Training Team Members
  • Making Decisions as a Team
  • Dealing with Difficult Team Members
  • Documenting the Team Project So Others Teams Can Lean From It
• All of the presentations were Classroom-Based presentations
• Slides and worksheets were developed so they could be used both in the Leadership Workshops, and also in the Team Projects themselves.

Train-the-Trainer Phase

1. Our client’s consultants were experts in their field. But they were not professional “facilitators.”
2. We conducted a series of train-the-trainer workshops for our client’s consultants. These workshops helped them feel more confident in their ability to present – and role model – the material in these workshops.

Special Skills/Software

• Instructional Design
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel

Our Client had expected to enhance the existing product it offered to its customers. As we worked through the design phase, it became clear that what we were developing was actually an entirely new product – a set of consulting services that were above and beyond the client’s previous offerings, and that could be sold as part of Lean Manufacturing or any other curriculum in the Quality area. Our client was excited to be able to market these workshops, and enjoyed the additional revenue stream that resulted.

Customer Organizations had the tools they needed to develop internal leaders who were able to implement Lean Manufacturing and other quality disciplines.

End Users were given the tools they needed to develop their leadership skills, then put them to use in projects that had been hand-picked by top management.

For more information about this project, please contact us.