I had an interesting conversation with Bob Browning of Savage Sports last week. Bob runs the supply chain for the company’s Savage Arms subsidiary, which makes an assortment of rifles, shotguns, etc. The company is deep into a lean transformation that helped it win the 2009 Progressive Manufacturer High Achiever Award in the supply chain category.

Savage put a slight twist on conventional wisdom in building out its lean initiative. Experts advise against trying to bake lean into the entire organization at the start, instead taking piecemeal steps toward a company-wide initiative. And while Savage followed that advice in starting with a simple two-bin pull system on the factory floor, it approached the education angle differently.

In fact, Bob attributed Savage’s success to the ubiquity of the lean philosophy in the early days of the program.

“We actually had every hourly employee trained in lean,” he told me, including office staff, planners, and plant floor workers. “I think that’s really the foundation you have to work from.”

To do that, Savage worked with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which provided the training. The Mass MEP is part of a national program of resources for manufacturers, and many lean companies have gotten their start by working with their local extensions.

My advice: Do the same yourself. The fate of the MEP changes with the whims of Washington — just last year the program was on the chopping block, and this year legislators are considering expanding the MEP — so use it while you’ve got it.

Another reason to check out their services: The MEP recently teamed with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers to roll out a Competitive Manufacturing Toolkit.

Meanwhile, Bob Browning and his Savage cohorts continue to find new ways to lean out the organization. “We’re constantly reinforcing the lean philosophy and the journey of lean,” he says. “It never ends.”

But how it begins is probably more important than any other factor in determining whether it succeeds. And training all team members sounds like a good first step.

For more on Savage’s story of lean transformation, stay tuned for a profile in the September issue of Managing Automation.