How can you get employees to buy into lean manufacturing principles in food manufacturing?

Explaining the benefits to the company isn't as important as the benefits to the employee! Successful implementation of LEAN or any other improvement should have components of making their job easier, safer, less demand for OT, and more opportunity for advancement, pay rise, or bonus. Telling them how the company and management benefits without bringing them benefits is not very useful.

You need to ensure you have the trust of employee's before attempting to explain the value and importance of Lean manufacturing. Not meeting a commitment (in the past), will damage the trust relationship. It is a lot harder to gain employee buy-in if they don't trust you. There may not always be a financial incentive for the employee's, however you as the manager need to understand the desire's of the staff. Some examples may include less overtime required, increased opportunity for training and development and improving their overall working environment.

The benefits must be communicated to the employee, how it will help to achieve the goal of the company, benefits to the employee and gain competitive edge. Involved the employee for their inputs and feedback on how change on the current process can be achieved for the better and providing them with the necessary tools, training and resources to support them for the change.

Need to check and mapping to the target for explaining the benefit to make the frame of understanding is in the same frequency

The benefits of Lean Manufacturing are enormous and vitally important to a company in terms of its employees and its "Sustained" success. I would always stress focusing on what are the "Non Value Added" areas of the workplace environment, processes and behaviour that can drive through efficiencies. By alleviating WASTE your company can increase sales. Its proven!

When employees own processes , improvements and milestones are celebrated ...this makes them continually strive to improve the system.

The production employees are the people doing the work, and for sure they want to do it more efficient and safely! Create teams for different projects, incentivize the projects and then measure the results for all to see as charts on the wall!! Keep employee health and safety and food safety at the top before projects are implemented for increased yields.

Include them in decision-making processes, providing a sense of ownership and fostering commitment. Have Gemba walks with different teams with the goal of finding waste, have short daily and weekly meetings to share the progress and next steps.

Este paso es primordial para que los procesos de fabricación sean exitosos, además de mantener desde el inicio la calidad requerida del producto . Al involucrar al personal se obtienen excelentes resultados en productividad, cumplimiento de metas, optimización de tiempo y recursos. Cada persona puede aportar valiosas ideas💡desde el puesto que desempeñan, como parte de la mejora continua. Estoy de acuerdo.

I would like to see this step from the systemic thinking point of view. I see a food manufacturing company as a whole system and its personnel as an important part of this system. So I can't propose a situation where the personnel aren't involved, and that system is successful towards its goals.

De acuerdo con este punto. La motivación en los empleados es muy importante para que ellos sepan que sus esfuerzos en mantener una buena cultura es observado por sus superiores.

Una cultura de disciplina implementada diariamente, disminuye errores donde en algunos casos puede ponerse en riesgo el producto final. Se debe hacer lo correcto aunque no te estén viendo, entra en juego los valores y principios de cada individuo. Estoy de acuerdo

This, I believe is the most important point. Any Lean initiative must be "Sustained". By introducing and nurturing Lean Leaders from your whole scope of employees they can feel part of the Lean journey and this will ensure projects are sustained. For example, have a think where materials are stored in relation to where processes occur. Can storage solutions reduce the amount of wasted time searching for items? In essence, "Keep the faith"!! Real Change doesn't occur overnight

Establish a consistent lean culture through continuous reinforcement and recognition of contributions. Transparent and consistent communication is essential.

The major setbacks are observed when we got primary results, sustaining the culture become dificult once management thought results are accomplished, so it became hard to sustain results. when focus and funds from management dried up.

Identify and address any obstacles employees face, ensuring a smoother transition to lean practices. Use problem solving processes to find and eliminate root causes.

Resistance to change is a hard barrier in front of lean manufacturing. For instance, if you're used to meeting others in person, it can be challenging to switch to online meetings. However, it's essential to recognize that resistance to change can create barriers that can hinder the effectiveness of lean manufacturing.

Estoy de acuerdo, escuchar las opiniones de los empleados ayuda muchísimo en el cumplimiento de los objetivos de la institución. En algunos casos al no ser escuchados pueden llegar a perder la motivación. Las empresas deben de disponer de personal con la suficiente capacidad para desempeñar un cargo de confianza.

Set up a Food Safety Culture in a Food industry, in which we incentivarte employees to maintain GMP’s and Employee Safety with recognitions.

Completamente de acuerdo. Parte de la mejora continua es mantener una institución de acuerdo a las normativas vigentes. Buscar asesoramiento y capacitaciones externas facilitan el flujo de los procesos de producción. Se logra la optimización de muchos recursos.

Keep it simple, no jargon. Explain lean in a way that is relatable. Every one of us is already a lean practitioner as we don't like waste in our own lives. For example, our kitchen is a production area we all have. We take raw- materials and convert them into finished goods (meals or drinks). How? By following standard settings - oven temp & time, following SOPs (recipes), use correct tools & PPE. This room also has the most hazards which we risk assess and take mitigating actions. We consider efficiency by placing things at point of use and use machine wait time (kettle or oven) to do other things. We consider quality by following procedures & ensuring tools & equipment is kept clean, in good working order and stored appropriately.

All things to be start with Basic 5S, we all follow basics at every point in life at home, at kichen. Lean practices gives upper hand in reducing wastages. Empowering team with lean practices, recognising them, rewarding them also creats movement in lean implementation.

Plenty of Lean Manufacturing techniques can involve "Visual Management". We humans interact with our eyes of course and so many pointers towards how, why and when operators behave can be addressed and any efficiencies acted upon. If you have a design / marketing department then I would involve the whole site in certain aspects so the whole workplace "flows" on a visual level. Nothing worse than a patchwork of differing styles, designs and signage that do not connect together