**Abstract**

Should there be an understanding that rigor in analysis must be out-of-bounds for Lean initiatives? Will this rigor not facilitate a benchmarking of Lean initiatives? Why not a Lean initiative cause-consequence assessment not performed for building future fault tolerance? The effectiveness of a company's strategy is critical to its success or failure. Lean strategy seems to be claimed as a widely recognized factor for business success and competitive advantage. However, empirical evidences do not promote the idea that Lean has delivered results every time. Study results indicate that success or failure of lean initiatives strongly depends on how companies approach it and on whether company has created their own curated philosophy towards Lean. Then, success is not dependent alone on a strategy, but on how daily operations are aligned to strategy. This chapter aims to address the above questions and a greater number of questions that we experience on a day-to-day basis with regard to Lean applications in the real world. Chapter Learning Objectives: Understanding Lean, Lean failure modes, and Lean initiative precautions.

**Keywords:** Lean, failures, assessment, arguments, 6Cs

### **1. Introduction**

Why Lean initiatives are not analyzed independently and collectively to understand the failure modes that resulted in many failures firms conceded in the past? Why Lean is more 'appealing' to the corporate leadership when pros and cons of the methodology and its nuances are not well studied? Has Lean ended up as one of the many continuous improvement initiatives many organizations have undertaken as it does not demand long rigorous trainings, no expectation of quantitative acumen, no requirement of good historical data, decision on the effectiveness and efficiency outcome is completely within the ambit of the enterprise giving the ultimate flexibility?. Did absence of a structured methodology, benchmark and a third-party assessment has given the maximum convenience and performance priority low? By giving fancy terminologies such as transformation, high velocity development, out of the box idea generation, have we lost the direction and purpose?

Should there be an understanding that rigor in analysis must be out-of-bounds in lean philosophy? Is that absence makes Lean an affable, acceptable, and appealing slogan to a larger section during their attempts to cross the barriers in eagerness to reach the holy grail of excellence by quicker means. In total irreverence, if lean has to fail what more could be a bigger reason, when this strategy is recognized for the questionable characteristics in pursuit of agility, such as superficial management, reluctance to examine sustenance of accumulated benefits, and avoidance of

retrospective studies. So is Analytics, an inevitable villain, in the drive to excellence? Process mining and data analytics are integral to business excellence journey riding on and capitalizing the benefits of Lean, augmenting the methodology without missing its innate flavor. The new normal induced today's global economy, characterizes demand specificity, spend thrift consumers, substitute products, aggressive pricing, etc. has created a breed of customers who are demanding much more than ever. The innovate and compete has become imperative and inevitable norm of the day. Improve to sustain and survive, but not at the cost of bleeding reserves, rather by optimization and conserving. This can only be done by minimizing the manufacturing cost of products by increasing the productivity and reducing wastage during production. Therefore, the industrial organizations realized the need for efficient and effective use of resources in a way that justifies production economics [1]. Thus, these organizations tried adopting and adapting several strategies to confront this challenge, including the lean manufacturing strategy [2].

The concept of lean manufacturing originated in Japan with an intent to conserve funds by eliminating wastes by identifying sources of waste and then using tools to eliminate them. It is now widely publicized that organizations that practices lean manufacturing methods produces world class products that have significant cost and quality advantages over those who still practices traditional mass production. But, if we have to claim, Lean has its origin in Toyota Production system, then we also need to agree that the system at Toyota is integral to Toyota way of life and if another company has to replicate the same success they need to develop their own unique values, principles and priorities of life. The Toyota philosophy has evolved over a period of time over a value system that thrives on safety, security and motivation of their work force. Thus, Lean has to be a way of life that is unique to an implementation and cannot be a medication only at a time of illness rather it is a vaccination schedule for a life.

It is concluded from the available literature that the lean techniques are theoretically applicable in all industries and has proven their success in practice specifically in large organizations. It is the management style that sets the tone for employee attitude that determine the maturity of lean operations within a company and they set the culture of the lean organization [3]. The lean environment that takes undue advantage of the flexibility lean offers and the fear psychosis instilled by leadership to find a waste as a mandatory dictum together works counter-productive to leaning operations.

Despite its long existence, Lean has been moving with the tide set-up by socioeconomic and political winds that prevailed at those points in time in the enterprise. Post world war2, the demands varied through the years as countries slowly regained their economic stability. During this time, the challenges determined, for what Lean must stand for. At times, it was shortage of skilled men and raw material then demand from Lean was optimum resource utilization, scarcity of storage houses forced to have zero inventory as a target. As economy got its boost, commerce benefited and demand certainly began to rise, then managing supply versus demand became a factor that created market advantage, hence Lean focused on quicker delivery with minimal steps to produce. Labor unrest, famines, pandemics and cost highlighted the need for Lean to focus on human resource management. Once commerce flourished and alternate products flooded, Lean turned attention to meeting productivity targets at reduced cost. Thus, during the tumultuous post war period, Lean revised, and improved its definitions, multiple times.

Overall, the management commitment, financial sponsorship, competency development, and culture; probably are majorly impacting lean operations. The rest of the chapter proceeds with a literature review that identifies the different

perspectives evolved in the prior papers. Then, research methodology explains the method adopted by the authors to complete this study. Then comes, arguments and discussion that outlines the various failure themes and then, there is an outcome recommendation that reflects the possible procedural precautions that may control the recurrence of potential failure modes, and finally chapter culminates in the concluding thoughts of authors.
