Creating a great continuous improvement culture means lots of projects. That, in turn, means a lot of people will be away from their jobs on a regular basis. In addition, more minds looking at a process means more ideas on how to improve it. Both of these require that employees Read more…
One of the challenges in continuous improvement is getting gains to stick. Backsliding is common. It is demoralizing to a team to spend time and energy and resources to change a process, only to learn that a short time later, their efforts have evaporated. Read the main article by clicking Read more…
In any organization, time is a valuable commodity. We cover the 1/3 – 2/3 rule in detail in the main part of this post, but want to get some feedback from you on whether or not your leadership team provides you with enough time to accomplish the projects they assign.
Please feel free to expand upon your answers in the comments section below. (Note that you do have to be logged in to post comments, but registration is free and lets you download hundreds of pages of terms and dozens of forms and tools.)
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POLL: How many internal CI experts/consultants should a company have?
Organizations that thrive at continuous improvement often do so because they have a staff of dedicated experts acting as guides on their Lean journeys. There are a few different flavors to how these people are assigned, though.
POLL QUESTION: Which training product would most help you develop a stronger continuous improvement culture in your organization?
One of our goals is to help you create the best continuous improvement training program possible. We do this through a combination of various factors:
Lean experienced a fairly slow start in the 80’s and early 90’s, but picked up its adoption rate rapidly in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Of late, it seems to be reaching something of a saturation point in manufacturing, but is still spreading rapidly in other areas. The Lean office is still going strong. Lean is making substantial inroads into healthcare. I see more requests for Lean information from those in higher education. Even the government is getting into the act, albeit at a slow pace. (Note: These observations are from personal experience. It is surprisingly hard to find reliable, believable, compatible data about Lean adoption.)
POLL QUESTION: What is the source of improvement activity in your company?
For most companies, the pull for improvement activity and the source of ideas comes from a variety of sources. As a company becomes more sophisticated, Lean efforts originate from an increasingly diverse range of systems and stakeholders.
From the list below, please check all the sources that act as meaningful originators of improvement activity in your company. Please do not check a block if the source only contributes on rare occasions or if it provides ideas without resolution.
One of the hallmarks of an organization that is devoted to continuous improvement is the visible posting of metrics in work areas.
POLL QUESTION: How long will it take a typical average company to become Lean?
One of the questions that many people have when they start a Lean journey is, “How long will it take?” Now, the truth is, this question is nearly impossible to answer. The motivation and resources of the company, the quality of the leadership, the presence of a crisis, and a host of other factors affect the speed with which a company embraces change…