Small Business: Continuous improvement and lean management

Trish Wilson, founder of CICE.

The management philosophy "lean" is centered on making obvious what adds value by reducing everything else. This week we look at Kiwi companies' lean strategies and how it works for them.

Trish Wilson is the founder of CICE, which stands for Continuous Improvement Culture Everywhere and is a network for New Zealand's lean and continuous improvement community.

How did you come to start CICE?

I worked for Villa Maria as their continuous improvement specialist, and like many people with these kinds of roles in companies around the country I found it can be a bit lonely at times when you'd like to have someone else to discuss various challenges with, or to get inspiration from.

So I started developing this idea of a network a couple of years ago to take a new approach and bring together all the passionate individuals involved in this area. Continuous improvement is a journey, so we're just listening to what activities resonate with people and growing it from there.

What are some of the opportunities you see for New Zealand businesses, particularly at the smaller end of the scale, in embracing continuous improvement?

I think we have a huge opportunity in New Zealand to embrace continuous improvement, and there are a lot of people already doing some great things up and down the country. Rather than the relatively small size of many of our businesses here being an impediment, I think that offers us a real opportunity because we can more easily network, learn from each other, and overall create a greater push with these ideas.

The term 'lean' itself came out of the US in the 1980s, after some research that included looking into the Toyota Production System in Japan, which at that point they'd already been working on for 40 years. Here in New Zealand, of course, we're operating in quite a different context to that, and often I'll hear people say 'we're not a manufacturing company, so I don't know how we would apply it'.

Also, there are as many different approaches you can have with lean as there are people applying it. Which is why I think it's so important for businesses to take a holistic approach to lean, and look at the bigger picture of why and how they're applying it.

Because the underlying philosophy is still the same, no matter what the company is: they still start with their challenges, with their leadership, with problem solving, with daily improvement thinking, respect for people, and the end point they're trying to get to.

What are the biggest challenges you see smaller businesses dealing with when looking to embrace lean?

Time is the biggest challenge for everybody. But in a small business where everyone does everything it's even more of an issue to take people out of the business to begin to learn how to apply some of this thinking. It's especially hard in the beginning because you don't always see results directly or straightaway. But once people do see the successes, then they're away.

The initial buy-in also needs to come from a company's leadership, but that can be especially hard for the person running the business who's juggling everything else. They don't have to be the expert, but they have to be leading and modelling the thinking to perpetuate the culture.

Also, there aren't a lot of direct examples for SMEs around who are doing this to learn from. If you do site visits and tours with the various lean clusters that operate around the country you're often seeing the bigger businesses that can regularly accommodate 20 or 30 people visiting their site.

What advice would you have for a small business owner wanting to get started with introducing continuous improvement into their operation?

• Don't go it alone - get amongst the networks, get a mentor, and then mentor people within your business as well.

• Don't directly copy Toyota - or any other business for that matter, even one down the road. You can definitely learn from others, but each business is different so you have to figure out an approach that works best for your business. There's no magic bullet.

• Leadership is key. A culture of continuous improvement has to be led and modelled from the top, and the people leading this work need to be invigorated by the challenges and the opportunities it presents.