The House of Lean model consists of the foundation, the walls, and the roof.
The Foundation includes four elements.
- Leadership: It is crucial that the Leadership team is on board in order for Lean Methodologies to work. This starts at the very top of the organization and filters all the way down.
- Employees: Lead Methodology brings employees into the mix by accepting and listening to their input.
- Trust: Trust must exist between Leadership and the Employees, between departments and especially between individual employees. The foundation will be more solid if everyone knows they are working toward the same goals.
- Goals: All Lean Methodology projects must have clear goals in place. If everyone does not know what the desired outcomes are, they will not be in a position to help support them.
The Walls: The Walls are structurally sound when all processes are strong. This includes improvements to efficiency, waste elimination, and quality improvement, which help ensure a company is producing the best possible products at the lowest prices. As a result of the walls being strong, profitability improves. Optimizing processes can include implementing strategies such as 5S, Kaizen, Just-in-Time Production and Kanban.
The Roof: In House of Lean, the customer is the focus of the Roof. It is important to keep the customer’s specific wants and needs at top of mind at all times. If a product is optimized by improving the processes put into place in the Walls, it won’t make a difference if the customer is not interested in or in need of the product itself.
House of Lean is important because it provides a valuable framework, often related to manufacturing, in an easy to understand analogy. As with building any house, it is important that the foundation is built first and is strong enough to hold the walls and roof securely and successfully. The same is true with Manufacturing. It is important to have leadership support as the foundation, then optimized processes for quality and then customer needs and wants as a priority.