Regulations are rules that are established by an authority. While the term is somewhat generic and can be used by any person or group in charge, this discussion will be limited to governmental agencies. In practice, most companies do not call their directives “regulations”. There are more likely to call them policies or rules. Governmental bodies at all levels have the power to enact laws. These laws, however, often lack clarity in the fine details. Read more…
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.
How many KPI’s should your team have? There are a lot of variations on an old saying that goes something like this: “That which gets measured gets done.” This is especially true in Lean organizations. Making improvements requires a detailed understanding of how things are going. Many of these metrics that are tracked are simply used to keep a process operating properly. Some, however, rise to a higher level of importance. These are the metrics that are either critical Read more…
One of the things that takes some getting used to in a Lean organization is the fact that people are constantly watching each other. Leaders are relentlessly told to go to gemba. Teams participate in a never ending parade of kaizen activity. Employees from other work areas visit to do benchmarking and get ideas for best practices. In a nutshell, if you work in the company with a culture of continuous improvement, you will be on display.
Process documentation is important for two reasons. The obvious one is to create work instructions that record the details of how a process should be completed. The other big reason is to create a standard sequence of operations (i.e. when the process steps should be done) to provide more consistency in the time a process takes. This helps leaders accurately assess the staffing needs of an organization. It also provides an indicator of when a team member is falling behind on a process.
Training does not happen by accident. Building an effective team requires planning. This training plan should, at the minimum, consider the following: The overall needs of the organization An assessment of the current skills of the team Training capabilities Training goals This training plan does a few main things. It makes sure that training is not being done haphazardly. The simple act of creating the plan means that you are putting thought into improving the Read more…
So, it is a lazy Saturday morning, and my elementary school age son asked me to play a game of baseball on the Wii. He even offered to “take it easy on me.” It is impossible to resist an offer like that, so, of course I played.
The first inning was scoreless. In the second inning, he put up 4 runs to my goose egg…
I dropped my son off at his elementary school this morning. The spot where they line up was flooded with a giant puddle that was a few inches deep. Interestingly, there were a few different responses to this unusual situation. Some kids just got in line behind it and paid little attention to the standing water. Some kids moved up and explored along its edge. Some of the more adventurous ones, primarily those with boots on, walked into the puddle.
Trust is an important part of continuous improvement. Team members have to believe their bosses. They have to be sure that making gains won’t cost them their jobs and that making mistakes on projects won’t get them in trouble. Lean requires a great deal of autonomy from frontline employees. Lean leaders need to trust them to make decisions on their own and to act in line with the needs of the company. Employees also have Read more…
Isn’t Lean just for manufacturing? One of the common misperceptions about Lean is that it is effective only in a manufacturing environment. While it is true that this is where it has its roots, the principles of continuous improvement that are primarily associated with Lean manufacturing were used throughout Toyota in its early days. But because the most tangible, obvious application of Lean was on the shop floor, when people first became interested in what Toyota was doing, they Read more…
Some people worry about shark attacks. They see the stories on the media, and get concerned that they will be a victim. But let’s look at the numbers. In the decade of the 2000’s, there were 11 unprovoked shark attacks in the US.
One of the realities of creating standardized processes is that they need standard times. This is generally done using the Time Observation Sheet. The challenge, though, is that there are a few different strategies you can use when selecting the person who should do the work when being timed. If the person is slow, most people will be standing around when they do the process. If the observed individual is one of the most proficient, others will struggle to keep up.