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"Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great." - John D. Rockefeller An essential element in Lean thinking is Kaizen.  Kaizen is the Japanese word for continuous improvement or change for the better.  As no process can ever be declared perfect, there is always room for improvement.  Kaizen involves building on gains by continuing experimentation and innovation. The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as: Standardize process Measure the standardized process Analyze measurements against requirements Innovate to meet requirements and increase productivity Standardize the new, improved process Continue cycle infinitely Kaizen involves every employee - from upper management to operators. Everyone is encouraged to come up with small improvement suggestions on a regular basis. This is not a once a month or once a year activity. It is continuous. Kaizen is based on making little changes on a regular basis: always improving productivity, safety and effectiveness while reducing waste.  The western philosophy is often summarized as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, the Kaizen philosophy is to "do it better, make it better, improve it even if it isn't broken, because if we don't, we can't compete with those who do."

"Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great." - John D. Rockefeller

The most effective strategy is to build an organizational culture into one that promotes continual improvement. A continual improvement culture is one that is constantly changing to improve (grounded in long term principles: respect for people, experiment, iterate quickly, etc.).

The heart of most effective continuous improvement is experimentation. Experimentation is the mother of all learning methods. It drives learning throughout an organization based on what is real, not based on theory or opinion. Whether you use PDCA, DMAIC, 8D, A3s or any other method in the alphabet soup of continuous improvement, there is a backbone of experimentation whose spirit you can follow, or fail to.

And the journey continues ...

In any field, there are a handful of common mistakes. Continuous improvement is no different. Some of these errors come as a result of ignorance about the proper way of doing things. Some are the result of habit. And a handful come as a function of taking the path of least resistance.

Challenging list... Well worth the read!

Tips for Continuous Improvement

Perhaps we can use something like this in our Program Mgt Task Force

Great suggestion...

So…participate! If you set up a system to surface, capture, and apply small and rapid continuous improvement ideas, then use it. Be a role model…a visible role model. This is not to show off. If you want small ideas from others, then find small ideas, submit them, and execute them. Let everyone see you using it.

A key component of continuous improvement is to show progress. It's not about miracles or heroic solutions or solving massive problems overnight. It's about building momentum. It's showing your employees that you're headed in the right direction. It's making visible changes, even slight ones, that show you're doing something. You're demonstrating that you support them. You're giving them a reason to trust you. You're building faith.

There are three key metrics to track our progress when striving for the ideal of continuous improvement.

One of the foundational principles of kaizen is that one takes many small steps toward the ideal condition, continually. The strength of this approach is that by keeping the steps small it is both psychologically and physically easier to take action, causing a positive feedback loop as people are encouraged to take more small steps. However there are also weakness with kaizen as improving in small steps.

Some recent pictures of CIs in the Distribution Center.

It was impressive to watch this evolution.

A simple improvement to make their work a bit easier!

More from our team in the Distribution Center.

The implementation of a certain tool may bring about on-time and on-budget performance, but the tool must also be used efficiently once it has been implemented. It is all very well to have nice tools; however, it is the behavior of leaders and employees that will determine the final results. An insight from the Shingo Model™ explains it beautifully: "Only via ideal behavior we can achieve ideal results." If we want to have a 100% safe environment, we want to see the staff talk to each other if they see unsafe behavior. Do you want to achieve a culture of continuous improvement? If you do, you should look for new items to constantly place on the improvement board, and you should see tips and tricks shared spontaneously. As leaders, we want to set a good example; and if a leader sees inefficient behavior among his/her employees, he/she must speak to them about this in the correct manner. But how do we get the ideal behavior that we want to see in our organization?

In sum, 1. The reality of the shop floor is clearly reflected in the standard work 2. Standard work must be realistic and applicable on the shop floor 3. Standard work must lead to continuous improvement opportunities

His approach to expose problems and to help workers visualize the problems was simple:

Limit work in progress
Limit the number of workers
By doing both (1) and (2), Ohno believed that it will place workers in challenging situations that will force them to improve their processes and thereby creating a culture of continuous improvement.

I'm putting each of these on my Amazon wish list.

As Ohno says in The Birth of Lean: "If you're going to do kaizen continuously, you've got to assume that things are a mess." Brilliant.  If everything is OK, I have no need to improve.    Why is this hard for us to do??  Is it our culture of self-esteem, holding "feeling good about ourselves" as a supreme value? Do we simply compare ourselves to ourselves, so we always look OK?  Are we all from Lake Wobegon, the ficticious Minnesota town where all of the children are above average? A view of a zero-waste state will shake us out of this arrogant stupor.  With that perspective, things are indeed a mess.