Sticks and Stones may break your Bones, but Buzzwords can actually kill you.

[resultsassoc]

I have a client obsessed with Lean. It was brought down from the Mount on stone tablets.

It's a very useful tool. There are others with different applications. In Theory of Constraints it's often necessary to introduce "waste" to get higher-margin production. In Economic Value Add people introduce waste when trying to reduce waste of a resource for which there is no other current use. In Continuous Improvement Lean sends you looking in the wrong direction sometimes. In Six Sigma, Lean is a detriment until you've achieved repeatability. Same thing in ISO, which Lean can turn into I(n) S(each) O(f) bankruptcy attorney. This list is endless.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you confuse a tool with a religion, the other gods will prove vengeful. Buzzwords can be fatal. There is no universally-applicable frame of reference in business, let alone in life.

[prestonhunter]

That's funny.

There's that question that freelancers run into sometimes:

When do you just go along and do what the client asks you to do, because she is paying you, versus when do you just say no and bring your expertise to bear to do things the "right" way.

Totally has nothing to do with Lean, but your story reminds me of a what happened early in my work with a current client of mine - somebody I'm still working with. He posted a job for somebody to use Adobe Photoshop to automate some tasks. Now... I'm a big fan of Adobe Photoshop. I maintain a licence, and have used it for decades. I really love that software. And it DOES have some great automation features.

But this was totally the wrong solution for handling the client's project. I told him so in my job proposal, and he hired me. We were weeks into the project, and he was still suggesting that maybe we should be using Adobe Photoshop. Only after I delivered the working version of what he needed - which most definitely does not use Adobe Photoshop - did he understand where I was going with this and why Photoshop would have been completely wrong for his automated image-processing workflow.

[resultsassoc]

I told the client what he needed, found it, priced it, designed the factory for it, and he said No. His manufacturing expert had other recommendations. I advised using a configurator, he insists it's non-negotiable using a photo-based image generator (cannot show any changes in frame, just fabric) that allows him to offer two of his 175 end items for sale, adding items takes months.

I just spent seven hours designing five percent of his facility. That included trying to revive the things I had recommended but the expert rejected. It turned out the expert had zero manufacturing background and zero knowledge of automation. The warrantied used equipment is in someone else's factory now. The money to build out the plant was spent on a gorgeous showroom; the general contractor knows he has the client over a barrel now and won't help me at all get to the point where he can begin the multi-month process of getting city permits for electrical work. He committed to buying new equipment he didn't need, can't get his money back, has ordered four times the storage he needs, his gorgeous expensive website can't take orders for another six months, I need to solve how to get orders into his systems, he has no designs (pretty pictures, but you can't build from a pretty picture), wants to order tons of inventory

Oh, and he needs to start manufacturing in November.

I tried having a discussion about the fact that they're screwed with the senior partner, but he is sure the guy knows what he's doing, don't bother him with the details. I have a short message for him on Monday: just one detail. You are facing certain bankruptcy.

[colettelewis]

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@Bill H wrote:

I have a client obsessed with Lean. It was brought down from the Mount on stone tablets.

It's a very useful tool. There are others with different applications. In Theory of Constraints it's often necessary to introduce "waste" to get higher-margin production. In Economic Value Add people introduce waste when trying to reduce waste of a resource for which there is no other current use. In Continuous Improvement Lean sends you looking in the wrong direction sometimes. In Six Sigma, Lean is a detriment until you've achieved repeatability. Same thing in ISO, which Lean can turn into I(n) S(each) O(f) bankruptcy attorney. This list is endless.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you confuse a tool with a religion, the other gods will prove vengeful. Buzzwords can be fatal. There is no universally-applicable frame of reference in business, let alone in life.

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The only tools one should rely one are one's brain  and commonsense. When you start muddying the political and economic waters with the latest pop jargon (or software) you will slow the machine and be less effective.