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Gotta Go Lean Blog

What To Expect From Our Recorded Lean Webinars

As a small company, we are challenged to get new products to market fast enough to meet your needs. To combat that, we use the ‘better, not perfect’ philosophy at times. Instead of spending the time and resources to create a highly polished product, we record classes presented as a webinar and create an unedited version of the training on DVD. What you get: Our same great content. A companion to our outstanding PowerPoint classes. Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

QCD / Quality, Cost, Delivery

QCD is the acronym for the broad categorization of metrics and KPIs in continuous improvement. The acronym QCD stands for: Quality: In most cases, this view of quality is “conformance to specification”, rather than grade. Cost: Cost, obviously, has a prominent role due to its close tie to profitability. Delivery: Delivery is the ability of an organization to both hit its promise dates, as well as to get its products in customers’ hands in a Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Pacemaker

An unlinked production environment is like an accordion. Some processes move faster than the average and some operate more slowly. As a result, parts move through the system at varying speeds, only to end up in piles of inventory scattered along the value stream. Even with a takt time in place, there can still be some fluctuation in the actual performance of processes. This happens when they are not somehow linked together. This fluctuation gets Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Your coworkers are reluctant to help you out when you need support.

There’s an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately, many office environments face a similar problem regarding balancing capacity and demand. Because the incoming workload fluctuates, it never matches a static capacity. This effect is compounded when work is assigned to individual employees rather than being pulled from a shared pile.

By Jeff Hajek, ago

The Real Problem with Air Traffic Controllers Sleeping

I’ve been reading a lot about the problem of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job lately, and I haven’t seen anyone address the real root cause of the problem. What has been mentioned at length is the fact that there are periods of radio silence. In those cases, the pilots are aware of the abnormal condition. They know that there is nobody answering their calls. They take prudent action when they can’t get Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

An Overlooked Benefit of Kaizen Events

Everybody sees kaizen events as an opportunity to make an improvement. Most people also see them as an opportunity to train teams. But few regard them as a way to identify the future leaders of the company. Employees working in frontline production roles have limited chances to demonstrate their skills. Of course, there are some who will shine through and will be noticed by their leaders. But the potential of many goes unnoticed, especially when Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the people that are vested in the outcome of something. They are not necessarily people who actually do the process, but they do have some skin in the game. Stakeholders that are indirectly affected by a process frequently have a negative effect from the change. In many cases, they will be asked to bear some of the costs of a new method despite getting none, or very little, of the benefit. For example, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Appreciation for People

People crave appreciation for their performance. They put a significant amount of effort into their jobs, and most people closely associate their personal value with how they feel they are perceived at work. There are many ways leaders show that they appreciate their team. In some cases, they display their appreciation by presenting the person with something tangible—a bonus, a gift, a plaque. In other cases, mere recognition of the work that they do is Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Neuroscience and Lean

I was surfing around the Kindle store the other day, and found a free download that looked interesting. It is no longer free, though. Sorry. The title might put some people off: Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders. To be honest, I have only skimmed over it a bit, and don’t quite know if I would give a full recommendation yet, but it does have some pearls in it. It also has Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

The Truth about Financial Incentives

Over the last year or so, I’ve seen a rising belief that says financial incentives don’t work. There are even studies that reinforce this belief. One shows that when financial incentives are given for simple tasks, productivity can rise. But when the task is complicated, results can actually get worse. The findings make sense in the short term. Simple, repetitive tasks don’t fully engage a person’s brain. When you add in an incentive, it generates Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago