Are there any controls built into the Lean methodology to prevent sacrificing quality for efficiency?
CY: Sorry, but that supplier may have talked Lean but they didn’t live and breathe it. Some companies implement a Lean tool or two but do not understand the concept. Bad quality is a defect and that is a waste that needs to be eliminated, not passed on to an internal or external customer. Employees need be engaged in finding and fixing problems, creating a Poka-yoke (mistake-proofing) mechanism to prevent the mistake from occurring again or to make it obvious so the problem is not passed along.
