Using the Lean Method to Improve Your Business’s Productivity
An interview with Melania Santoro Lyons, Corporate Strategist at Jaguar Land Rover
Tell us a bit about yourself and your background
Melania:
I come from a technical background. I studied Aerospace Engineering and have a Masters in Astronautics Engineering and Motorsports Engineering. I used to work in Formula 1, which is a very fast environment where you need to turn around a lot of data for strict deadlines.
I then worked in motorsports, at a consultancy company, where I was looking at how you can merge your company processes with customers and partners. I then moved into the automotive industry in 2015. I am currently working at Jaguar Land Rover and have been working on a lot of exciting projects, including the first electric car that Jaguar Land Rover produced, the I-PACE.
A couple of years ago I moved into corporate strategy at Jaguar Land Rover and am working on the strategic planning of electrification and how to create and maintain innovation. The automotive industry is evolving, and our concept of how we perceive a vehicle is changing.
We are now moving into a time of connected, electrified, shared mobility, so it’s a transformational journey. I’m very passionate about technology and how technology can be used to solve human problems and spur innovation.
What is the Lean method and how does it improve efficiency?
Melania:
The Lean method is all about streamlining business processes to maximize customer value while minimizing waste by using fewer resources. The central concept of Lean is about continuous improvement. Lean was originally developed by Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System, but it is a method that can be applied to any process and any industry to improve efficiency.
Lean helps to reduce costs, improve productivity, and ensure quality while boosting employee engagement and morale. This framework allows teams to continue to innovate.
Another system we use in the automotive industry is Six Sigma. This also seeks to create the most efficient process possible, by eliminating unnecessary variation.
This helps us to be reliable, efficient, and always improve the process. Quality control is very important in any industry and any department. Alongside Six Sigma, we also use an approach called Total Quality Management. This focuses on maintaining high standards of quality as well as making incremental improvements.
A lot of people perceive these frameworks as something that only relates to manufacturing, but these concepts can be used across any industry and for any process. It’s a way of working and developing your skills so that you can apply your full brain power to all of your projects. You are creating a culture of quality.
When I was working in the battery team for the I-PACE, Jaguar Land Rover’s first electric car, we used multiple Lean tools. For example, we had daily scrums. Scrums are like informal cross-functional white-board type meetings, scheduled within specific time frames. This is a way to have an informal check-in during a process or project. For us, this was very important as we were in the launch phase, which is the last phase of the production of a car.
So how can businesses in other industries improve their efficiency using Lean?
Melania:
If you have a process you can definitely utilize and benefit from continuous improvement. This can be done for any company and any process. Let’s take an example, the onboarding process. You have a new person joining your company. This process starts on day zero until, let’s say, day ten when that person is self-sufficient and doesn’t need any further help or training.
For any business situation, you have to factor in time, and time is cost. When a new employee starts at a company, you are investing in that person and they are going to have a learning curve. Even if you have someone joining who is an expert, you can assume the learning curve will be steeper, but there will still be a learning curve.
How can you speed up this process? This is where you can use the Lean method to improve efficiency. You can collect quality data and feedback throughout the process to keep improving it. You also want this to be a pleasant experience for the new person because you want to retain your employees.
People join a company full of enthusiasm and you want them to retain this enthusiasm. Don’t undervalue a fresh set of eyes. If someone comes from a different background or a different department, their feedback could be crucial to improving the onboarding process. That’s where continuous improvement comes in. You want people at your company to feel heard and to feel that they can actually make a difference. Lean techniques and Six Sigma are built in a way that you can always challenge the status quo.
There’s a common phrase, ‘we have always done things this way’. If it was working in past then why change it?’ What Lean working means is looking at continuous improvement, so even if a process is working you are still always looking for ways to improve it and to make it more efficient.
Let’s take startups for an example. It’s a common belief that startups are quite agile because they don’t have much bureaucracy, so they can turn things around quickly and this is how to encourage innovation.
With Six Sigma you can make startups even more efficient, by creating processes that give you a framework, which allows you to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and ensure that decisions are cross-functional. So, for example in the automotive industry, the decision of what car to make is aligned across multiple departments: engineering, finance, marketing, etc. Every department might have its own way of working and its own timescales. Six Sigma allows you to put everything in one process and make it more efficient. Milestones are very crucial.
How long will it take you to get from point A to point B?
Melania:
I also wanted to mention about “left shift”. This is another concept we use in the automotive industry. Let’s say we are thinking about bringing out a new car. There will be different phases that the car goes through:
1. Idea (design/concept)
2. Testing
3. Creation of a prototype car
4. Signing off
5. Production of the car
We use a V diagram. It’s a diagram in the shape of the letter V, which is a framework to design your car, build your prototype/test cars, and then sign off your car. The “left shift” is about trying to concentrate more resources (human/software etc) into the first part of development, which is the first half of the V.
Let’s think about it as a scale, with production on the right and development on the left. By moving more investment (people and resources) to the left, this allows us to test everything virtually. If you discover an error or issue in this virtual world it’s cheaper and faster to solve, than if you have already built your car or prototype.
A lot of companies, especially now in this era of digitization can test everything virtually before you build a prototype. The ‘left shift’ is part of Six Sigma and Lean working.
Ultimately, it comes down to efficiency and cost reduction for the company. But not just that, becoming more agile means you can adapt to ever-changing markets. That’s what we are living in right now.
If you are in control of your process, you have an advantage over your competitors and your employees are more engaged if their voices are heard and they can chip in to create a better process. Employees who are engaged in their work are statistically proven to be more productive.
You have all this brainpower from your employees, and you can use it to generate more innovation, and you don’t have this continuous recycling of employees. You’re investing in people and you want them to be happy and to stay with you at the company. That’s where Six Sigma and the Lean way of working come in.
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