Creating a Lean Culture, 3rd Edition

156 ◾ Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions

business process often negatively affects the measures of individual

departments, which are tuned for optimizing performance on functional

measures. For all these reasons, cross-functional improvement projects often

come up short. Projects run into internal boundaries. Ultimately, compet-

ing priorities and department or functional boundaries defeat the effort

to improve the end-to-end process. Even if the end customers and the

organization as a whole would benefit, internal boundaries and competing

priorities stymie progress. If a given department’s priorities are elsewhere, ...