David Mann of Steelcase trained as a social scientist, yet through his interest in organizational development and change management at Steelcase has become an expert on lean—not just as regards manufacturing, but management as well. His book on the subject, Creating a Lean Culture, was awarded a Shingo Prize.

David Mann doesn't work for a car company. He doesn't work for an auto supplier. He's not a consultant. Yet he is something of an expert on lean manufacturing. In fact, his book Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversations (Productivity Press; www.productivitypress.com) won a Shingo Award, which is as prestigious as it gets in that realm. David Mann isn't even a manufacturing guy, per se. "I'm trained as a social scientist." Mann earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan. He works as manager of Lean Management and Organizational Development for renowned office equipment manufacturer Steelcase, Inc. (Grand Rapids, MI; www.steelcase.com), which competes in an industry that has undergone wrenching changes similar to those in auto: When the dot-com bubble burst, suddenly there were a whole lot of prospective Leap chair customers looking for work, not furniture. Mann acknowledges of the Steelcase lean undertaking: "We're doing it to do the same things the automotive industry is trying to do, which is to understand what our value streams are and what produces value from the points of view of our customers, and understanding where there's waste in the value stream so that we can remove it so they can flow and allow the customers the full value, and keep working to improve them. It's very much the same thing."

Well, maybe the macro is very much the same thing, but the dedication with which they're working at lean at Steelcase is something that auto companies and suppliers could learn from.

As Mann recalls his introduction to lean, he says that about 10 years ago he'd been involved in change management support for production supervisors who were undertaking a switch from supervising people who were doing batch production to teams performing lean. He went out on the floor, accompanied by Toyota trained sensi, who were involved in developing the processes that were deployed by the workers. "I'd see these well-designed lean processes that were just falling apart." Yes, they'd done the job of preparing the supervisors for taking people from batch to lean, "but we hadn't prepared the leaders for what they needed to do once they got there." And because they didn't know what the next step was, they went back to doing things the way they'd done them in the past.

Mann discovered the vital importance of lean leadership. The sensi, he says, repeatedly told them to "focus on the process," and so one of the things they did was to create what they call a "lean management system," one that includes standardized work for supervisors. He admits, "In some ways it's a script—although it trivializes the role of leaders to put it that way—but it is definitely a behavioral recipe so that if you do these things you'll be focusing on the process, and if you follow up appropriately, you'll be regularly identifying where there are opportunities for process improvement because the process will tell you." What's more, it will drive the leaders to get things done. A large part of this is propelled by the fact that the lean processes are in what he describes as a "finely balanced, delicate state," as everything from floor space to inventory to capital equipment to personnel are kept to a minimum. And this balance can go askew. In fact, Mann insists that the processes will go out of balance. Which necessitates a whole new mindset, especially among the leaders—and not just those on the factory floor.

"What makes lean difficult is not that it is so complicated but that it is so different from what we've learned," Mann says. He explains, for example, that so far as managers are concerned, "Your job used to be about meeting the schedule at the end of the day and doing whatever it takes to hit the results and worrying about tomorrow tomorrow. Now we've put in these finely tuned lean systems and they break all the time because they're designed to break all the time. If you don't help people in leadership positions understand that it is important to embrace those process misses and use them for clues as to what to be working on, all they want to do is make the misses go away or cover them, usually with time or inventory. It's very frustrating for them." It's particularly frustrating, Mann clarifies, because of what they have historically been doing, which, in effect, is fighting fires on a daily basis and then doing what they can to avoid any conflagrations. Yet here is a situation wherein it is better to stress the system so that it goes out of balance—or, in a sense, to start fires—so that improvements can be made.

Mann acknowledges: "Of course you have customers and schedule commitments and of course you have to meet them. But you put in place countermeasures." You prepare yourself to handle the situations. But doing so is in some ways behaviorally harder than doing what you've always done. "It is rare to make this kind of change unless you really have to. It's difficult, wrenching, disruptive." Yet Mann is convinced that this change is essential: "There's a lot of data that says if you look at any industry and there is one company that adopts the lean principles, what happens in the rest of the industry is that the other participants either also adopt lean methods or they don't survive." And in the auto industry, Toyota hasn't simply adopted lean methods, it's helped develop them.

"I think the challenge for American manufacturers—and it just doesn't apply in the plant; we have major work going on in our enterprise processes—is that you've got to have people at the top who have experienced it or who are willing to make the continued leap of faith that says ‘If we do these things, we will continue to get better.' All of us know that every year the expectation is that we are going to get better and we have to be better." But there are expectations, and then there are the ways that those expectations can be realized. Those expectations start at the top, so it is necessary for those at the top to become involved in lean.

Mann says that at Steelcase they're walking the plant floors with executives (taking them on "gemba walks"—going to the actual place where things are happening), and that these executives are learning what to look for and what to ask about. "If the executive officers of the company are asking those questions, what they're doing is creating a market for lean. If they're creating the market for people to learn how to be lean thinkers, you can bet they'll learn how faster than if people like me are going around." In other words, management matters, and he suggests that one of the ways that companies like GM and Ford might be able to beat Toyota is for the likes of Rick Wagoner and Bill Ford to take some of these informed walks.

Mann says of lean: "It isn't that it's complicated. It's that it's really, really different. And it requires giving up lots of conventional wisdom, like a process miss is a bad thing." And that in itself is, for some people, really, really difficult.