I spent last week teaching three sessions of Job Instruction. One session at the end of night shift starting at 5am, the second session catching the start of day shift at 7am, then the third session for swing shift at 1:30. What is cool, though, is there is a senior member of the site leadership [...]
Note – this post was written pretty much simultaneously with a post on the lean.org forum. Mike Rother has put up a compelling presentation that highlights a long-standing misunderstanding about the purpose of “standards.” Some time ago, a (well-meaning) author or consultant constructed a graphic that shows the PDCA wheel rolling up the incline of [...]
One of the problems facing all of us – from pundits to practitioners alike – is “too much information.” We look at a complex state, like the way Toyota operates, try do describe it in great detail, break it down, build models, and say “OK, make it look like that.” So one of the most [...]
“Resistance to change” is a common theme of discussion among practitioners on various online forums, as well as in emails I get from readers. One thing I see fairly often is that a practitioner will be suggesting a visual control or a specific application of a “lean tool” as a “better way” in the process [...]
I was in a conversation today and we ended up boiling 5S down to three key points: You have everything you need. You need everything you have. You can see everything clearly belongs where it is. Of course at the next level, these statements are the standards you are continuously checking against. Presumably we have [...]
Mike Rother has made some significant revisions to his Improvement Kata Handbook. The role of “True North” is much better defined as the context of improvement. He has filled in a lot of valuable detail for “Grasping the Current Condition” and setting Target Conditions. The structure for the PDCA cycle has been tightened up. [...]
Learn to be thorough before working on speed. The speed will come naturally with competence. Every coach in the world gives some form of this advice to her students. This is true for athletics, for music, for any skill we are trying to develop. Yet when planning kaizen events, we tend to forgo this advice, [...]
One of the most common (and frustrating) problems for the staff lean practitioner is being asked to “measure the savings” resulting from specific improvements. (This problem is related to, but different from, trying to measure “lean progress” or the status of implementation.) There are two issues in play here. First is the level of understanding [...]
The classic one-week kaizen event ends with a report-out by the team that outlines the improvements they have made, and the results they have achieved. Actual results, though, are notorious for falling short of what was reported. Action items are left over, and things frequently peter out unless there is a huge effort to force [...]
What is the role of your lean facilitator? This question comes up now and again, was recently posed on the LEI forums by someone looking for help with a job description. I extrapolated from his question that he was looking to the job description as a line of defense against dilution of the facilitator’s focus [...]