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Improvement doesn't just happen.  It takes time, and in the pressure pot of our day to day activities, there is never enough time to improve our situation. The structure of Lean permits and requires time be set aside for improvement. If managers do not definitively provide time for the task of improvement, then people will know that they are not serious about making improvement a formal part of the work.

Excellent point!

"Improvement doesn't just happen.  It takes time, and in the pressure pot of our day to day activities, there is never enough time to improve our situation. The structure of Lean permits and requires time be set aside for improvement. If managers do not definitively provide time for the task of improvement, then people will know that they are not serious about making improvement a formal part of the work."

In the spirit of doing better, the smallest ideas are likely to be the easiest to adopt and implement. These improvements are sometimes called Point or Mini Kaizen. Making one small change is both rewarding to the person making the change and if communicated to others can lead to a widespread adoption of the improvement and the possibility that someone will improve on what has already been improved. There's no telling what might occur if this were the everyday habit of all team members.

Process mapping is often the first step in business process improvement. It is a necessary activity that provides a baseline from which improvements can be measured and is the key to identifying and localizing opportunities for improvement. Therefore, it is important to capture the right information to help steer process improvement initiatives in the right direction.

Before rushing ahead with a process mapping and improvement effort, consider some of the following questions. Some of these may seem basic, but yet I see people not thinking these basics through. If our process was much better than it is today, would it yield the performance gains we desire? How much better is today's best process compared to ours? What else besides our process might be holding us back? How much better could we get just by executing our current process with more discipline? Please understand that one of the last things I want to do is give people excuses for not doing process improvements. But since the objective of process improvement is to improve results, then we better be darn sure this is what we are going to accomplish.

When it comes to improvement methodologies, scalability is important.  It's great when we can use a consistent approach to improvement regardless of whether we're working on a small, incremental improvement on the front-lines or a big, strategic improvement at the enterprise level.

The following key points summarize Lean and Lean Metrics: 1) Make Lean so simple anyone can understand it. 2) Fix what bugs you and improve it everyday. 3) Every employee must make a 2 sec improvement everyday. 4) People fail sometimes and solutions may not valid but you learn from that. 5) Create a routine like: start day with Sweep, Sort, Standardize, then improvement time, then morning meeting. 6) Give people time everyday to experiment, train, and teach. 7) Simple metrics -            a) 1 improvement everyday            b) Orders out in 2 hours            c) Less than 1 mistake a week            d) Want customers to rave about us 8) Defects are something the customer sees. 9) Develop the skill and capacity to solve problems by everyone everyday.

Can we also put "Kaizen: FastCap Style" on the list.

Sure, just post it here, and tag it "film festival".

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.).

"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

Does kaizen require volunteerism to reach the highest level of success? Or does it require management mandated 100% participation? What if you are just starting an effort to have people in your organization formally improve their work? Do you recruit volunteers, or mandate improvement by each and every person? Does this evolve into an act of coercion, where people are not fully engaged with the act of continuous improvement - but only doing so to keep the boss off their backs?

Throw out all of your fixed ideas about how to do things. 2. Think of how the new method will work - not how it won't. 3. Don't accept excuses. Totally deny the status quo. 4. Don't seek perfection. A 50 percent implementation rate is fine as long as it's done on the spot. 5. Correct mistakes the moment they're found. 6. Don't spend a lot of money on improvements. 7. Problems give you a chance to use your brain. 8. Ask "why?" at least five times until you find the root cause. 9. Ten people's ideas are better than one person's. 10. Improvement knows no limit.

One piece flow for Continuous Improvement - How often are we improving?

Constantly!

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

Great suggestion...

Lesson 1: The critical importance of the simple act of walking. When you get bogged down, distracted, or even discouraged rediscover the power of going to see. Lesson 2: Never walk alone. What is the benefit if only you see the current state and think of a better way to create a future sate? Always walk the value stream with the people who touch it. It will be their efforts who are needed to improve it. Lesson 3: Expand your focus. Many look primarily at the steps in the value stream and ask how to remove the waste. You must ask about the support processes to get the right people to the right place in the value stream at the right time with the right knowledge, materials, and equipment. Lesson 4: Reflect first on the purpose of the process. Focus on what problem the customer is trying to solve and ask whether the existing process, now matter how well, run, can effectively address their problem. Pay special attention to the way people are engaged in the operation and its improvement. Lesson 5: Make work fulfilling. There is nothing worse than seeing good people trapped in an unfulfilling process that they lack the power to improve. Lesson 6: Stability before full panoply of lean techniques. The process must be capable (able to produce good results every time) and available (able to operate when it is needed).

What do you get when you combine free and Lean?  Well, the FreeLeanSite.com. Jay Watson is the Lean thinker behind this site. It grew from a passion of implementing Lean on the shop floor at companies like Motorola, Honeywell, and General Electric. He started the site to make "lean thinking" concepts of continuous improvement highly accessible for practitioners in North America. Our primary focus is on accelerating the developmental process, sustaining the effort, and most importantly - driving for results. The majority of the training modules are absolutely free to download and modify as needed. A management improvement process focused on elements of Safety, Quality, and Speed of Execution provides a framework for action. The site has four major sections to aid in finding the right resource: Jay also provides some advice on implementing Lean by defining a Lean Roadmap.The roadmap consists of the following three phases: PHASE 1 (GET READY): PLANNING FOR IMPROVEMENT PHASE II (GET SET): CONDUCTING A PILOT PROGRAM PHASE III (GO!): TEAM PROBLEM SOLVING/ SKILLS DEVELOPMENT I have been truly amazed by the sheer amount of Lean related material that Jay has compiled.  This is a great resource for learning on your own or sharing with your team.

More wisdom from last week's factory tours with Ritsuo Shingo: 1. Don't ask workers for improvement ideas. Ask them: What work they don't like What work is tiring Any suggestions they have for management In other words, you can't just ask for "improvement ideas" unless and until you've established trust - i.e., until you've earned the right to ask for their help. 2. "Blaming your workers is like spitting in the sky. It comes back down on your face. It's your teaching that needs to be improved." 'Nuff said.

Awesome!

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.

Real Kaizen thinking is based on making these 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."

"I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special." (Dr. Edward Deming)

And so we look for innovative, unique, breakthrough improvements and overlook seemingly mundane, simple ones. Here's how simple it can be. A few weeks ago, I was in Derby , England, at Pride Park, home of the Derby County Rams. While in a conference room overlooking the football pitch (or soccer field, for Americans), I watched one of the groundskeepers painstakingly but quickly laying out orange cones very precisely on both ends. Once I saw what he was doing, it was so simple yet effective.