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About Lean Project Manager
Lean Project Manager is a Lean Transformation technical services company providing a range of services for companies making the transition from traditional mass production to Lean Manufacturing/Lean Enterprise.
LPM Becomes an Idea
The Lean Project Manager idea took root in the 1980’s. One of the current consultants for Systemental, Inc. was an over-tasked, entry level employee at a Fortune 500 corporation manufacturing site at that time. The company he worked for tasked the entire management team at his plant to implement continuous improvements at an aggressive rate. The site manager and the local team members were all capable, experienced, ambitious, and enthusiastic. It was an ideal place to work.
There was only one problem, the team’s sense of urgency was actually getting in the way of achieving the plant’s objectives. Priorities were changing daily as the latest discovery of an area of sub-par performance was uncovered and shoved to the top of the project list. The team’s sense of urgency was an excellent trait, but something had to be done to keep that sense of urgency from continuously adding projects to an ever-growing “Active” project list. If something was not done, the “Active” list would always be unmanageable, and the completion rate would suffer as each key project owner tried to juggle too many projects at once.
A Clear, Easy To Use Process Was Needed
A well defined process for managing continuous improvement projects was needed. The over-tasked employee took it upon himself to create the process. During the process design phase, the stated goal of the process was, “to accelerate project completion rates while at the same time reducing stress for all team members”. The first version was Microsoft Excel based and somewhat cumbersome. Even so, the local team recognized its value and implemented the process with great success. The plant went on to win numerous awards and to gain tremendous market share from its competitors.
The process contained nothing truly revolutionary. The most obvious key to its success was that great care had been taken to keep the process simple and to implement it in a way that emphasized individual contribution, teamwork and group accountability.
Decades of Proven Success
The employee continued to implement and refine the process repeatedly over the next 25 years as he moved throughout his career. The process was well received and had a markedly positive impact wherever it was used. Suggestions were made by the users over the years, and the process was refined. Eventually a comparison was made between the principles driving this successful process and principles of Hoshin Kanri. A nearly direct match was discovered and this exciting development launched a business - Systemental. Now for more than a decade, the Systemental team has been working with business executives and technical leaders at Fortune 500 and smaller firms through two “storefronts”:
Lean Project Manager, specializing in helping technical leaders guide their organization through a successful implementation of Lean and Policy Deployment.
Systemental, specializing in both total implementation services and cross-functional problem solving through strategy deployment security services for business executives.
You can learn more about the successful track record the people behind Systemental and Lean Project Manager by visiting the Systemental website.