Transformational Leadership and its impact on Lean Implementation

Paradox is used in organizational studies to describe the tensions between two seemingly opposite entities that are in fact complementing each other. Leadership has been shown to deal with such dualities on a daily basis. The transformation process required for implementing Lean principles in manufacturing organisations, involves leadership paradoxes in their pursuit for successful Lean transformation that adds value for their organizations. This article documents a systematic literature review with the objective of investigating the extant literature on the subject that falls under the umbrella of "Lean Leadership Paradoxes". The review is limited to peer reviewed using search terms such as lean, leadership, lean leadership, leadership paradoxes, and lean leadership paradoxes. The research has found that limited research was conducted on Lean Leadership and leadership Paradoxes while research on Lean leadership paradoxes is almost non-existing in academic journals. The value of this study lies in 1) highlighting the gaps in this body of knowledge and 2) identifying areas for possible future academic and practitioner research.

Regardless the kind of organization, a successful lean manufacturing (LM) implementation is highly dependent on its people, both leaders and followers. Hence, the way leaders act and behave influence the attitudes and behaviors of the followers, setting the predominant culture within the organization undergoing a lean implementation. This article aims at identifying the leadership styles and contextual variables that best support companies undergoing a LM implementation. To achieve that we apply a clustering method that combines information gathered from a survey carried out with 68 leaders from different companies with different levels of lean implementation. Our approach identifies leadership styles that may contribute to the level of lean practices adoption considering specific contextual variables of the leadership such as age, experience and size of team. We argue that, viewed as an evolutionary process, there is more than one best way to lead teams that are implementing lean. Further, we state that leadership contextual variables are associated with leadership behaviors and the level of LM implementation, indicating that the expected relationship between leaders' styles and LM implementation may not be as suggested in the existing literature.

2020

Researchers have identified leadership as a critical success factor for Lean Six Sigma implementation. It is essential to understand leadership behaviours that facilitate the use of Lean Six Sigma. This paper aims to identify leadership styles from the literature that can facilitate Lean Six Sigma implementation, which in turn broaden the current understanding of the suitable leadership styles. Also, the authors aim to explore how leadership styles can enhance Lean Six Sigma operations. The authors systematically reviewed the literature on leadership styles and Lean Six Sigma. The results determined the leadership styles that can enable the use of Lean Six Sigma successfully. These leadership styles are as follows: situational (task-oriented or relation-oriented behaviour), transformational, servant, authentic, empowering, and distributed leadership. The authors provide a better understanding for practitioners and researchers from existing literature on how leaders’ behaviours can e...

XIII Congreso de Ingeniería de …, 2009

In the present paper, the work developed throughout several years carrying out implantations of Lean Manufacturing (Cuatrecasas, 2005; Womack and Jones, 1997) in different environments is presented. From the above mentioned implantations, we have ...

Reflections The SoL Journal

Many organizations have achieved impressive results in various aspects of their business through lean transformation. Few firms, however, sustain those initial results, and many struggle to bring the results down to a bottom-line impact. This article links research literature on change management with lean case studies and presents a form of distributed leadership that facilitates lean transformation. Distributing leadership practices is one of five capabilities identified for successful lean enterprise change (see Table 1). A working paper that discusses all five capabilities in depth can be obtained by request from reflections@solonline. org.

Proc. 28th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC), 2020

This paper presents the fourth issuance of Building a Lean Culture with a Lean Leadership (LL) training program initiated by the company. So far, the LL program has reached over five hundred participants. Over the last year, the program "grew" new passionate facilitators who then taught their Business Units and Departments. These new facilitators engaged with their students at a much deeper level by applying the concepts specifically to meet their needs. The connection was cultivated organically because both the teachers and students had a personal and professional relationship already in place from working together. This paper shares success stories from the new facilitators on how their teams, in the company's value stream, applied LL knowledge to their business. The concepts were applied in a variety of ways including go to the Gemba as a customer strategy for computer specialists, who typically work in the office. Transforming the company's business includes all leaders teaching LL as a key part of their skillsets to improve organizational health. The program's main goal is to disseminate lean through the company to support "the Leadership model" described by Howell (Howell et al. 2004) which is "coaching and continual fostering of an organizational environment conducive to building trust among people for collaboration, learning, and innovation".

2017

Lean enterprise is the Toyota Production System applied not only in the production department but inside all organizational departments (finance, marketing, etc.). It focuses on continuously adding value to processes while improving efficiency and inputs management. No organization exists that has fully mastered the Lean ideology. Many like Toyota have applied it for decades and seen results, while others have seen none and abandon the chase. It is important to understand that leaders are an essential instrument for an effective and successful Lean implementation. Further, there are variables that affect a leader’s behavior which in turn will have an impact on the organizational performance. In other words, different leadership styles will result in desirable or undesirable organizational outcomes. It is important for organizations striving for Lean improvements to have the most effective leadership in place. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to is to explore the variables interact...

Despite the successful application of lean thinking across a wide range of industries, and a number of UK Government funded programmes such as the Construction Lean Improvement Programme and Constructing Excellence, the construction sector lags behind other sectors as highlighted in the Egan Report (1998) and more recently in Sir John Egan’s speech to the House of Commons in 2008 which gave the construction industry “four out of ten – for trying.” This led to the research question: What are the critical success factors for lean construction interventions? The emergence of lean production as a concept and the contributions of its key historic influencers are explored. Differences between construction and manufacturing are compared and discussed, and it is concluded that there is no practical reason why lean production cannot be successfully applied to construction operations. However, the issue of buildings being “rooted-in-place” is a potential barrier to true global competition. Progress was made towards a satisfactory definition of lean construction, a term hitherto ill-defined. Nineteen potential critical success factors (CSF) were identified in a literature review. A pilot study conducted with senior construction staff experienced in lean construction identified a further seven potential critical success factors and discounted three derived from the literature. Face-to-face interviews with thirty-one construction staff that had attempted lean construction interventions were conducted to examine the significance of each factor. Of the interventions, twenty-six were successful and six were failures. Statistical analysis compared the failure and success groups and of a total of twenty-three factors examined, thirteen were critical, two important, seven not critical and one unknown. Some of the most cited lean critical success factors, for example “There must be a crisis”, were shown to be not significantly important for the construction sector. Interdependencies between the statistically significant factors were explored and it was concluded that a wide concern with “getting buy-in” exists. Three factors appeared to possess a greater ability to influence all the others: the capability of management; client influence; and the right facilitator. KEY WORDS Lean Construction, Critical Success Factors, Intervention, Definition

2010

In this exploratory study, we come to specify values and behaviors of six highly effective Lean middle managers, operating in three Dutch firms that have adopted Lean Production methods. With them we held interviews, surveys and video-analyzed regular staff meetings. For exemplary Lean leaders, key values are ‘honesty’ and ‘participation and teamwork.’ Their two most frequently found behaviors are: ‘actively listening’ and ‘building and sustaining trust relations;’ these were shown more often when more experienced in Lean. Our findings and resulting hypothetical model calls for longitudinal field designs to study Lean leadership and Lean team cultures.

2015

The study identifies a set of barriers and critical success factors (CSF) involved in the implementation of Lean Construction (LC) through three phases: Literature's Collection, with analysis and obtained information processing; Characterization and classification of barriers and CSF associated with the implementation of LC; and Identification of barriers and CSF in construction companies in the Colombian context, based on their experiences in the implementation of LC. 83 academic articles published between 1998 and 2014 were examined, being identified 110 barriers and 51 CSF based on experiences of LC's application around the world. They were grouped into six "Master Factors": people, organizational structure, supply chain, external value chain, internal value chain and externalities. The obtained information from the data was analyzed using a cause-effect matrix and a structural analysis with MIC MAC method, and the most critical barriers and success factors were...

26th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, 2018

This paper presents an analysis of a Lean Leadership (LL) training program initiated by the company about two years ago. The program's main goal was to disseminate Lean throughout the company, which has been using Lean principles in its projects for about 20 years. So far, the LL program has reached over 280 participants. The program is constantly analysed via feedback provided by participants, however, no detailed analysis like the one presented herein has been conducted and shared. Participants of the program were requested to provide feedback about the program by answering a survey designed to capture their background and impressions the training.Data revealed that respondents with different roles, mostly related to field tasks, are attending the program and would recommend it to others. Most respondents consider themselves Lean leaders and educate others on Lean content. Respect for people, use of visuals, go and see, and use of Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) have been reported as Lean tools and principles constantly used. By sharing the lessons learned about this program, the authors expect to contribute to the change management and education literature within the Lean community.

Many project management approaches have emerged to improve performance in the construction industry. Lean construction is one of the ways to design systems to minimize wastage of materials, time and effort in order to generate maximum possible amount of value. Lean Six Sigma is the combination of two well-known techniques Lean and Six sigma which focuses on quality improvement, reduction in variation and waste elimination. The purpose of this paper is to make an overview of the lean concept and also to include the barriers in implementing this approach. A detailed review of the literature has been done with the view of collecting relevant data necessary for the paper. A questionnaire survey has been conducted to find the barriers affecting its implementation. It was found that six main barriers are there in implementing the concept of Lean construction. These data were subjected to statistical analysis and necessary preventive measures are recommended for mitigating those barriers that were identified. By the implementation of Lean, it is found that, there is a significant reduction in waste, cost and time.

Many companies are complaining that lean didn’t achieve their long-term goals, and the improvement impact was very short-lived. 7 out of each 10 lean projects fail as companies try to use lean like a toolkit, copying and pasting the techniques without trying to adapt the employee’s culture, manage the improvement process, sustain the results, and develop their leaders. When the Toyota production system was created, the main goal was to remove wastes from the shop floor using some lean techniques and tools. What was not clear is that this required from Toyota a long process of leadership development, and a high commitment to training and coaching their employee. A Failure to achieve and sustain the improvement is a problem of both management and leadership as well as the improper understanding of the human behavior, and the required culture to success.

2015

There is a global shortage of competent and experienced individuals able to lead, coach, facilitate, train and provide consultancy support both internally and externally to clients, owners, constructors and designers who want to make a successful lean transformation of their enterprise or their projects. Demand exists within public and private sector clients and owners, as well as among design and construction enterprises and their professional advisers. If the shortage is not addressed there is the potential for the advance of lean thinking in construction to stall and lean construction to get a bad name as constructors and others seek to cut corners and pay lip service to lean as happened in UK (United Kingdom) 15 years ago. The aim of this paper is to begin a discussion of the skills and knowledge required by those who want to succeed in one or more of these roles. This essay reviews past lean construction leadership development actions and suggests a curriculum for those who wan...

AIP Conference Proceedings, 2018

With the rising attention on the topic of Lean construction and its benefits, more and more companies aim to implement the Lean philosophy in their culture. Together with changing the companies' culture multiple challenges occur. Hence, it is of utmost importance to identify factors, which lead to poor management in Lean construction activities. Therefore, this paper intends to identify and categorize barriers leading to poor implementation of the Lean philosophy. In this respect, a set of barrier groups comprising a total of twenty-seven components were identified. A questionnaire was designed and administered to Lean construction professionals in order to rank the importance level of the selected barriers. The paper proposes that lack of 'top management support', 'misperception about Lean practices', 'lack of information sharing and integrated change control' are the top three barriers for Lean implementation. The findings of the study indicate that Lean implementation might be conducted with higher efficiency and productivity by removing the barriers for implementation. This study might guide Lean professionals to align their strategies with Lean practices by knowing and recognizing the main barriers.