Lean Newsletter Archive, Jun 2010

You’ve got to love a job where you get to play with Legos® all day long! As I’ve been ramping up the development and production of my Lean Lego training kits, little colored blocks have been a part of my life.

Puttering with toys in my office is ‘R&D’. Going to the Lego Store with my son is a ‘vendor visit’ with my ‘consultant’. Or at least that’s what I’ve been telling my wife…

All that working with building blocks got me thinking a lot about Therbligs, the set of basic actions people do to complete a shop floor production job. Those actions fit together to form processes in much the same way the little bricks combine to form small models.

What many people don’t realize, though, is that information flow also has a set of building block actions.

So, in this month’s featured article, I introduce the concept of Kejahs, the actions people do when working with information. Using this systematic way of looking for waste in administrative processes will be particularly helpful to those of you in the Lean office. Give it a try and let me know how it turned out at Info@Velaction.com.

As always, best wishes on your Lean journey.

Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might benefit from it.

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you’d like to receive it, SUBSCRIBE HERE.

The good news: We’ve averaged a 13.4% monthly increase in traffic over the last year! The bad news: slow servers because of the growth. Click this link to get the workaround we are using as we try to solve this problem.

The Secret Trick for Office Kaizen Success

Making improvements requires a complete understanding of a process. A surface knowledge leads to superficial solutions. Getting a permanent, robust, mistake-proofed process requires a level of scrutiny that takes a lot of time and effort.

One way to simplify that deep dive and identify the underlying waste that impedes the smooth flow of information is to break each administrative process into its core activities. >>Read More>>

Kaizen Event Support

Kaizens are an important part of any continuous improvement effort. They can result in big gains–but only if they are done correctly. Poorly executed events can have long-lasting and costly repercussions.

Whether you need help creating a kaizen charter or you need an expert facilitator to help you plan and implement a successful kaizen event, contact us at 1.800.670.5805 or Info@Velaction.com today to discuss how we can help your team achieve sustainable results. Or you can click here to learn more.

Lean Lessons from Steve Jobs Being Poked with a Stick

Lean, Poka Yokes, and Taxi Cabs

Interruptions and Lean

• Lean Consulting
• Lean Training
• Lean Products
• Lean Services
• Lean Store

Jeff is also the author of Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean? Building the bridge from job satisfaction to corporate profit. This unique book provides a blueprint for not only surviving, but also thriving in a Lean company. Plus it's like two books in one. The first half provides an overview about how to find job satisfaction in a continuous improvement culture. The second half addresses over a hundred problems that people face when they are asked to do more with less. Whaddaya Mean? is available at www.Amazon.com or at Velaction’s Lean Store.