Lean Management: Perfect manifestation of Occam's Razor

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Lean Management Perfect manifestation of Occam's
Razor
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INSTANCE ONE
It was second World War. The US General, Patton
inspected a series of tanks and called the Major
General Collin Rutherford. He asked the Major
General in the US military parlance, 'Why the
bloody 32 tanks have not yet been eliminated? By
the time I return from the field, I want to see
that all useless tanks are removed or else, I'll
dismiss you...' Rutherford did what was ordered
and the 12th Marinet Tank Regiment got better and
more sophisticated tanks to win the Battle of
Seine.'
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INSTANCE TWO
Hind Motors management, Kon Nagar, Calcutta, had
a casual habit of piling up the old and discarded
designs of the automobiles (Ambassador cars and
its precursors, to be precise). In 1956, one
British survey engineer Nick Robertson found the
whole system of the unnecessary piling up as
redundant and immediately got away with it to
increase the productivity by 75 percent!
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INSTANCE THREE
Toyota applied Lean management, rather
conceptualized it, and got overnight success.
That's why, Lean management is also known as
Toyotism. In the era of off shoring, Toyota
considered going closer to the Customer, i.e.
they started producing in United States for
supplying to the Americans. It was by the way, a
way of Lean Management.
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WHAT IS LEAN?
Avoiding technical jargon for lay readers and
simple practitioners, it'll be useful to clear
the term LEAN at the outset. Almost all of us
have heard the word 'lean'. 'Lean' connotes
paling down to the bare minimum or bare
essential. In other words, it's the finest
corporate and management manifestation of Occam's
Razor (attributed to William of Occam) principle.
In Occam's Razor principle, we pick up the best
and most suitable among seemingly best options.
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GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR LEAN MANAGEMENT

• Defining value from the standpoint of the end
  customer.
• Identifying each step in a business process and
  eliminating those steps that do not create
  value.
• Making the value-creating steps occur in tight
  sequence.
• Repeating the first three steps on a continuous
  basis until all waste has been eliminated.

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LEAN MANAGEMENT KAIZEN
Lean management, when yoked with Kaizen's
continuous improvement, may result in exponential
growth of the organization. Discerning the waste
or what causes the waste, needs expertise. Reuben
Fionele, the French practitioner of Kaizen and
Lean management in Paris, simplifies it by giving
straight steps -

• Getting to the roots of a cause
• Determining its nature
• Categorising it
• Sectioning it as per the magnitude of the issue
• How to eliminate it
• How fast can it be eliminated
• Even while rooting it out, see to it that it
  leaves no remnants or vestiges known as CCG,
  cancerous corporate growth.

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