Raymond C. Floyd

While Lean practices have been successfully implemented into the process industry with excellent results for over 20 years (including the author’s own award winning example at Exxon Chemical), that industry has been especially slow in adopting Lean. Part of the problem is that the process industry needs its own version of Lean. The larger part of the problem is resistance to transformational change, a barrier that can only be overcome with effective leadership and results-oriented planning that engages rather than excludes all stakeholders.

Managing a business so that it achieves a supreme pace of improvement requires that all members of an organization can and do make their best contributions to the success of the enterprise. Management must provide employees with a shared set of values and beliefs so that they can decide for themselves how to behave in accordance with the expectations of a nurturing and empowering culture.