TABLE OF CONTENTS Here we go again. Another improvement program, another acronym, a different ribbon on the box, and another spin on improvement programs. The good news is that we're with you on this one. We think this issue is so important that we have devoted a whole chapter to it. Strategic improvement initiatives are now the norm for most organizations throughout the world today, but unfortunately, strategic results are less commonplace. Organizations recognize the need to reinvent themselves as superior competitors, dial in more precisely to customer and supplier needs, and increase their robustness to adverse changes in business conditions. These programs have been given different names over the years, but the heart of these programs is improving strategic and operating performance by fundamentally changing the way organizations conduct their business. In spite of the never-ending stream of improvement methodologies offering clear and consistent promises of improvement and return on investment (ROI), different organizations have achieved varying degrees of implementation success. In many cases, the real benefits have been part fact, but mostly delusionary.
Before we jump to conclusions about the Lean Extended Enterprise Reference Model (LEERM), this chapter will reflect on the critical leadership and soft-side infrastructure aspects of improvement. We need to answer some very tough questions about improvement programs before we go any further: Why is there variation in success among organizations implementing kaizen, lean, Six Sigma, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other strategic improvement programs? What are the root causes of...
