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Gotta Go Lean Blog

Abnormality Management

There are many different styles of management. One that works well in a Lean leader’s bag of tricks is abnormality management. In a nutshell, processes and systems are refined to highlight abnormalities. When abnormal conditions are highlighted, leaders and their teams can take action to return the situation to the standard condition. While this sounds simple, the truth is that it is seldom applied effectively. This is because most organizations do not have clear standards Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Birdcage

The term “birdcage” has two basic meanings in continuous improvement. The most common usage applies to when a work area encloses a person, trapping them inside. It is usually commonly applied to manufacturing areas where material racks and workbenches isolate a person, but cubicles act in a very similar way. They separate people from each other, and raise the cost of dealing with problems dramatically. They also serve as a barrier to communication and teamwork. Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Motion Waste

The waste of motion is one of the seven wastes attributed to Taiichi Ohno, the father of modern Lean. Motion is, simply put, moving more than necessary when doing work. It can be large motions, such as walking between work areas, or small motions, such as flipping a screwdriver over after pulling it from a shadow board. Motion waste also occurs in office environments. Walking to printers and fax machines, excessive clicking, or searching for Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

There’s More to “Lights, Camera, Action”

Yesterday I read something I hadn’t heard before about a very well-known phrase. I heard that there are standard responses “Lights, Camera, Action.” That’s right. Each one of the words is actually an instruction that requires a specific response. I am pretty sure that most people know that when the director calls “Action”, the actors start their scene. But do you know what the response for “Lights” is? How about for “Camera”? It got me Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Voice of the Customer / VOC

The “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) is the collective information that an organization obtains from or about its customers. This information comes in one of four basic ways, as shown on the image below: Organizations can either actively request information from a customer or can seek out information that is already flowing on its own. Likewise, the information can be either highly quantitative, as with sales figures, or can be qualitative opinions. The primary purpose Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

One-Touch Exchange of Die (OTED)

A big part of getting changeover time reduced to the point where it is a single-minute exchange of die (SMED), is figuring out how to do it with less motion. One-touch exchange of dies is an offshoot of SMED but is far more aggressive in what it advocates. Where SMED is generally considered to be done in less than 10 minutes (actually a single-digit minute exchange of die), OTED says that with continuous improvement, die Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Groupthink

Groupthink is the condition in which individuals set aside their beliefs and concerns to conform to group opinion. This is most commonly done because people value the cohesion of the group more than the risk of a poor outcome. While the term was first coined by William H. Whyte in Fortune magazine in 1952, a Yale psychologist, Irving Janis, did much of the early work on the theory. In groupthink, the consensus opinion of the Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Briefback

The process of giving instructions often leaves a significant amount of room for misinterpretation. People are often distracted during the briefing, or skim the email containing instructions. Or, the recipient may just make some different assumptions than the person delivering the instructions. Regardless, as in the childhood game of “telephone”, the message’s intent can be distorted. The briefback is an effective tool to manage that ambiguity. A briefback (sometimes called “brief back” with two words, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Noise (Sound)

Noise in Lean operations has a rather significant impact. High levels of noise can cause permanent hearing loss. There are basically two things you can do to avoid the loss of that vital sense: eliminate the noise or wear appropriate hearing protection. There are also other impacts of noise. People do not like working in overly loud places, and thus job satisfaction is diminished. In addition to the noise itself, morale is also reduced by Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

9 Steps to Better Metrics (+Video)

As I talk about making improvements, I invariably end up telling people they need focus more on their processes. Time and time again, just the simple act of gaining a deeper understanding of how work is done will shed light on what to improve. The spotlight shines even brighter when one crosses functional boundaries and looks at upstream and downstream operations. But after that initial knowledge is gained, I often tell people that they should Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago