Danaher Corp. / Lean Horizons Mark DeLuzio was the architect of the Danaher Business System, one of the most admired manufacturing companies in the country, and certainly one that has produced steady financial returns. DeLuzio spoke about how the traditional company moved lean off the shop floor and into every other department in the company. Here are some of the questions he answered: What constitutes a sound business strategy in the adoption of lean? Does lean help a company focus on strategy? What advice do you have for companies that don't have an overall business strategy? Veeder-Root, one of Danaher's divisions, went from selling hardware that monitors gasoline tanks to being a company that serviced the tanks. Is that an example of the strategic policy that you were in charge of putting in place at Danaher? Do you believe that only 1 percent of all manufacturers have adopted a lean strategy to grow their businesses? How does a company overcome the hurdle of knowing their problems exist, but actually saying we have to address them? How long does that shift take for a company that isn't running in a lean manner? Where is Danaher in its lean transformation process? How does Danaher go from 25 turns to 300? What do you think of the challenge GM faces, given Toyota's attitude? What did it take to change the culture at Danaher? Did it get worse at Danaher before it got better? How did Danaher and all of its divisions overcome that chaos? Do you have to have tough love in order for managers to change? Was it to your advantage to know how the process plays so that you could provide guidance as companies went through the difficult period of transition? Did you find that the implementation changed with each company? Is the value-stream map one of the key tools to deploy immediately? Do you produce a written goals document? Don't you think people need help to do this? How hard is it to bring it down to the guy on the shop floor? How hard is it to deploy lean throughout the rest of the company -- human resource, accounting, financing, engineering, product development, marketing and ordering? How do you convince someone in the finance department to change the way they do their books? How long did it take for you to get the financial systems aligned with lean operating practices? Lots of companies are doing their strategic planning and are deciding to outsource their manufacturing. Is that a good way to get rid of their batch-and-queue problems rather than having to go through the turmoil associated with a lean implementation? Is it inevitable that manufacturing companies will move towards a lean system? Is Six Sigma covering the same territory? What about a company that deploys just-in-time delivery as a way of doing business? Isn't that company deploying a lean philosophy? Are all of the companies that have gone to a JIT system basically lean? How hard was it to get buy-in from the shop-floor workers at Danaher? What types of behaviors must leaders exhibit in order for lean business practices to stick? To view questions from other interviews in Lean Machines, Click Here. Click Here to order a copy of Lean Machines.