When I first came in contact with Lean, I was working at a factory within the automotive industry. I must admit that at first I didn’t get it at all. It seemed to be used only as a tool to downsize and to lower the number of people needed on the production line. This lead me to get a very bad first impression. Also it was not really involving the workers of whom I was one so it was hard to get a grip of what it was all about.

As time went on I started to pick up on things that lead me to think there was something more to this Lean. I decided that I had to learn more, I wanted to know what the reasoning was behind what I saw.

Since I had learned that Lean was originally from Toyota, it seemed that Jeffrey Likers The Toyota Way was a good place to start. The short of it is that I was hooked immediately. The next book was Lean Thinking by Jim Womack. Again, it really opened my eyes to a whole new world. At this point I didn’t really know who any of the famous Lean-thinkers where but as it happens I had picked a good starting point.

Now began the journey to learn from the real world and to get everything I had read in perspective. To be honest this turned out to be very hard. What I had read and what I saw was not really matching up. At first I got confused but soon realized that most people around me knew as little or sometimes even less than I did about Lean.

The first line managers used a lot of expressions in Japanese but I don’t really think they knew fully what was behind them. This was evident it the way it was applied and presented to us on the factory floor. I decided that if I was to become more familiar with Lean and to understand and practice it fully this would be something I needed drive myself.

In the following year I read a lot, listened to podcasts, listened to colleagues and talked Lean. With every conversation and with everything I read I grew as a person and as a Lean thinker. However it was a hard journey, I didn’t really have backing from my manager or my surroundings. The joy of learning and developing skills made it worth every effort and I realized that if my current employer wasn’t going to utilize my newly found knowledge I might have to find someone who did.

This was but the first chapter of my journey to learn about and practice Lean.