Investing in a Lean tour

Companies live and die based on the investments they make. Invest in the right people, programs, practices and equipment and the business will likely succeed. On the flip side, investing poorly can lead an organization to failure. This is especially true in today's economy, where budget is a real issue and companies can't afford to make poor decisions with their money.

Many businesses view Lean as an excellent investment. They've seen the lifts in productivity and inefficiency that Japanese companies have achieved by creating Kaizen workplaces. At the same time, Western business leaders are also aware of the potential expense reductions they can achieve by integrating Lean. For the majority of organizations, implementing these Japanese mindsets and business practices is a win-win situation.

But while the decision to implement Lean is generally a good one, the way Western companies tend to go about integration is where many go astray. Japanese business culture and practices are radically different from the rest of the world, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that integrating Lean into operations may present a significant challenge.

In many cases, Western organizations will go through the motions to complete a Kaizen transformation. They hold Kaizen events and read about the 5S's, but they have trouble making Lean practices and mindsets stick throughout the organization. There are any number of reasons that businesses struggle to implement Lean, ranging from not having a benchmark to a failure to understand the intricacies of the practices and mindsets that Kaizen entails.

Investing in a Lean Study Mission

Undergoing a Lean transformation is an investment. It requires business owners to spend time, energy and resources to educate employees and transition processes. However, it's crucial that companies fully support this investment to their maximum ability – if they want to truly reap the benefits of Lean operations, they can't take a tepid approach to integration.

With this in mind, embarking on a Lean tour to Japan is frequently one of the best investments a company looking to implement Kaizen can make. As any business owner knows, the art of management is a complicated one, with numerous intricacies that may not be at all obvious. This is compounded further when entrepreneurs and managers are trying to understand unfamiliar, foreign concepts and business practices.

Many of the complications that Western executives and business owners face stem from the fact that domestic work culture tends to stem from the top down. Conversely, Lean operations start from the bottom and work their way up. When leaders try to integrate bottom-up business practices but manage from a top-down perspective, they are destined to struggle with integration.

Taking a Lean tour to Japan helps business owners observe Kaizen practices and pick up on these intricacies. Additionally, actually talking to the experts with years of experience running Lean businesses enables tour participants to better understand the perspective of Kaizen leaders. The saying “seeing is believing” has never been more applicable.

Make the investment that matters

Lean tours require an investment. All the relevant business managers and leaders need to clear their schedules to participate, and of course there is also a financial cost. However, companies should think of Lean tours as an investment as a part of a broader investment. Without a Lean tour, businesses could be missing key pieces of the Kaizen transformation puzzle. Just as a house needs a foundation, so too do Lean business practices need the knowledge and insight to make them work.

The Lean Tours that Enna offers provide a wealth of practical experience and knowledge in the concepts and methods of Lean and Kaizen implementation. You can read more about the tours here!