How to tackle the difficulties of the pull system

There is a basic factor that I believe is one of the main reasons behind the difficulties not only with the pull system, but with lean implementation as a whole. How many companies really have the "Kaizen spirit" embedded in each of their employees, managers and directors?

I have found that among companies (whatever the country... in Europe or Asia), those that practice Kaizen as something "normal" in day-to-day work (instead of "improvement projects" added on top of daily activities) naturally make the pull system a necessary topic for identifying the weak or critical points of the system in order to carry out more Kaizen.

Therefore, I increasingly try to start the Lean implementation in companies by:

1. Introducing the use of a problem-solving board (with hour-by-hour production control + Identification of the most frequent problems + Root cause analysis + Action plan and tracking of performance indicators). Daily problem-solving meetings with the team of the department itself and between departments (not only Production, but also other areas such as Customer Service, Logistics, Quality. In my experience, it was interesting to note how positive the participation of the Customer Service department was; it is the most important input of problems for the entire company, receiving feedback directly from customers, and by analyzing the causes one ends up touching on issues of Logistics, or Quality, or Process, which are analyzed together with other departments, with a focus on the Customer).
2. Once these problem-solving meetings and practices become something common (an initial practice of PDCA), I began to introduce the concept of Kaizen and the practice of Kaizen Circles and the Suggestions program (Kaizen Teian).

In parallel with item 1, the company's Hoshin is defined at the beginning, with the entire board of directors and the CEO. In 100% of cases, related to the subject of "Turn Over," inventory reduction comes in.

But since the Kaizen practice is already something commonly done in the company on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, with a well-defined process and management follow-ups being part of this Kaizen process, linked to the Award System, the actions deployed in the A3s and the Kaizen activities are complementary.

In this context, the implementation of the pull system becomes one of the systemic Kaizen and is sustained thanks to the Kaizen process already well established in the company.

*Lando Nishida has implemented pull systems in several countries around the world. He currently works at the Lean Institute in France. He was a project manager and instructor at LIB.