Continuing on a theme – a kaizen event should be primarily about learning, using the real-world improvement opportunity as a vehicle. Outside consultants (some style themselves as “sensei”) can be a good way to bootstrap this process by bringing in existing experience so you can develop your own more quickly. (Full disclosure here – Right [...]
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, [...]
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 STOPPED THE WORK TODAY? Identify each step (details!) For each step ask: Why is this necessary? What is its purpose? —-> Eliminate unnecessary, wasteful details. Can this detail be done outside of the critical flow? —-> re-sequence. Prior to the start, everything ready to go. Clearly define who must do what and when. Content [...]
One of the more effective facilitation tools I have come across is to have a team first construct an ideal flow, without the constraints of the space geometry, known flow-busters, or even too much concern about the takt time. Just make things flow as smoothly and efficiently as you can envision. Develop the flow as [...]
Mike Rother shared an overview presentation on the “Improvement Kata.” Introduction to the Improvement Kata View more presentations from Mike Rother. The words on one graphic really jumped out at me: Aside from his intended point that you never get good at anything but “business as usual” if “business as usual” is what you [...]
“What have you learned?” It is a question I hear often at the end of kaizen events and other improvement activity. The key points of a typical report-out, though, seem to be on how much was accomplished, and what was learned comes as an afterthought. A typical week-long kaizen event is organized like this: Monday: [...]
One of the issues Mike Rother says he has had with the coaching questions in Toyota Kata is question #5 “When can we go see what you have learned?” In the west, inevitably it seems, once the word “When” is uttered, everyone in the conversation leaps to hear “When will you be done?” no matter [...]
In my review of Toyota Kata by Mike Rother, I suggested that the staff-level practitioners who are embedded in almost every company that is “implementing lean” could put those practices to work immediately, even if it was not an ideal “top down” teaching process. This week I gave that a try. I was coaching a [...]