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Gotta Go Lean Blog

Daily Management Worksheet

The Daily Management Worksheet is a tool to help you update your production board. It has tabs for planning your demand and staffing. This information is automatically added to the production board worksheet to help you manage your day. The production board is the cornerstone of daily management. It is a very visual indicator of a team’s progress, and makes sure that everyone has the same understanding of the current condition of the team. Note Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Lean PDF Directory

Learn about our Lean Terms on PDF. Many of our Lean Dictionary terms (part of The Continuous Improvement Companion) come with a Lean PDF. Download a single Lean PDF file to brush up on a term while waiting for a plane, or get them all to keep a handy Lean reference guide on your desk or in a kaizen room. You can even print out copies for the whole audience of a class you might Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Do Goals Limit Team Performance?

Conventional wisdom contends that goals are essential for improving team performance. I’ve shared that belief for years, but what if it is wrong? What if goals act to hold back a team’s performance? For low performing teams, I’m convinced that goals do inspire improvement. For those groups, inertia tends to rule, and the status quo is king. Without specific targets, there is little spontaneous call for improving processes, and in turn, results. But what about Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Podcast: The Lean Management Mindset, Part 1

This week, we have the first of a two part podcast series on the Six Simple Steps toward a Lean Management Mindset. In these recordings, I interviewed Jay Watson. He recently completed a six week project, and his work highlighted some lessons that he learned over the course of his career. In the first session, we discuss safety, making status visual, and managing meetings. Next week, we will follow up with the last three concepts: Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

FIFO (First In First Out)

FIFO (First In, First Out) is most commonly known as an accounting term. It simply means that the first inventory into the accounting system is the first that is recorded as used. The opposite, LIFO, or “Last In, First Out” means that the most recently purchased materials are the first ones recorded as consumed. FIFO and LIFO accounting each has its own advantages and disadvantages, primarily attributed to inflation. For example, when prices rise, LIFO Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Lean, Reasons, and Excuses

What’s the difference between a reason and an excuse? The difference is one of intent. When a person has the intention of eliminating the barrier, he has encountered a reason. When a person does not intend to do anything about it, the obstacle is an excuse. For example, imagine that the leaders in a company attempting to improve flow identifies that their machines have long setup times. If they immediately go about trying to lower Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Performance Reviews are a Batch Process

In Lean companies, we talk frequently about how batching is bad and flow is good. And yet, nearly every company batches its performance reviews into an annual evaluation. The irony is thick. Those very evaluations—the ones containing 365 days of observations—may critique a Lean leader on how well he was able to reduce lot sizes. The problem with an annual evaluation is that there is no chance for an employee to correct course along the Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Stumbling Into Success

Success can seem lucky on the surface, but it seldom is when you dive deeper into it. Case in point. A few years ago I facilitated a kaizen event in a service center. The main goal was to improve lead time. In the course of the event, it became clear that one of the obstacles to flow was the maintenance program on the equipment. Much of it was precise instrumentation that needed frequent calibration. Technicians Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

BLUF Your Way Through Meetings

No, I’m not saying to fake it when you don’t know something. I’m talking about the acronym BLUF. Bottom Line Up Front It’s simple. Lead with what you are trying to accomplish in the meeting so people can stay on track. You are not trying to build suspense, so it doesn’t matter if people know what you intend to tell them ahead of time. BLUF also fits in nicely with the old formula to giving Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Kaikaku

Kaikaku is revolutionary change. Where kaizen is generally evolutionary in nature, Kaikaku requires radical shifts in thinking. Revolutionary changes tend to be far more challenging in nature and much less common than incremental improvement. Because of the broad, sweeping changes that kaikaku brings, it is generally driven by higher level leaders, and requires the commitment of greater continuous improvement resources than everyday improvements. It can also be hard for frontline employees to embrace the major Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Fishbone Diagram

The fishbone diagram (a.k.a. cause and effect diagram, a.k.a. Ishikawa Diagram) is a way of linking the causes of a problem to the observed effect. The diagram groups the causes in categories along the spine. The distinctive shape of the tool gives the fishbone diagram its name. This is one of the most commonly used of the problem-solving tools, and in fact is one of the primary seven quality tools. The fishbone diagram is a Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago