Lean Manufacturing is Compounding in Action

We talked about the Law of Compounding a while back. In fact, there was so much to say about it that I wrote two blogs (the blog compounded!). The thing about compounding is that it never stops. Our most recent series has been about the Lean Manufacturing process and as I was writing about the 2-second improvements, I realized that Lean is compounding!

Lean Manufacturing, which we talked about in our previous blogs, is based on identifying and removing waste. One tool used to improve efficiency and eliminate waste is called the 2-second improvement. A 2-second improvement is a small tweak that either saves a little time, a little material, or both. The goal is to reduce the time spent on a task by two seconds, so it’s going to be a small change, but that’s the point. If you try to save large amounts of time all at once, it’s easy to accidentally trim away things that are important.

These small improvements that compound to create big improvements are done a little bit at a time, so it trims away the fat and not the muscle. It also protects the reputation of your team members and your company because when a change is that small, it’s easy to roll it back if it fails.

The improvement also compounds over time. Think about it, if you save two seconds on a task that you do every day, the seconds saved increases every time you do that particular task. When a 2-second improvement is made, it very often inspires someone else’s imagination and they make a 2-second improvement to layer over the first, saving even more time.

This process, once seen and understood, begins to seep into every part of your life. It compounds until you can’t look at anything, even in your own house, without thinking about what waste could be eliminated and what 2-second improvement could be made to a process.

Let’s do some math. What does a 2-second improvement equal in 10 years? 121 minutes. That’s two hours of time saved. This is the definition of the law of compounding. In the Lean process, as described above, if we ultimately saved an hour a day with various 2-second improvements, over ten years, that’s equal to 2600 hours! That’s 108 days! What would you personally do with an extra 108 days in your life?

As you saw in the conversation that we had with Air Oasis, that’s exactly what happened when they started implementing Lean.

Something Jon, from Air Oasis, said made me think of the book Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson. He told me, “You don’t implement Lean to make more money, but that’s the end result.” You don’t focus on the fruit to create fruit, you focus on the plant. Focusing on Lean compounds time, which compounds money. Lean is the plant and money is the fruit.

Think about vineyards; vintners make their improvements to their vines years at a time before they begin to create the volume and quality of grapes needed to make a good wine.

Lean and 2-second improvements are the grapevines, and money and reputation are the wine. When nurtured, those improvements can last forever and give a lifetime of benefits.