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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."

"If we reduce batch sizes by half, we also reduce by half the time it will take to process a batch. That means we reduce queue and wait by half as well. Reduce those by half, and we reduce by about half the total time parts spend in the plant. Reduce the time parts spend in the plant and our total lead time condenses. And with faster turn-around on orders, customers get their orders faster." - Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal

"The best time to train workers is when an error is first detected. It also is the best time to solve a problem." - Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, VP of Production at Sumitomo Electric When do you train your personnel in problem solving? How do you train them in problem solving? Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, VP of Production at Sumitomo Electrics says "The best time to train workers is when an error is first detected. It also is the best time to solve a problem." He refers to this activity as On-Error-Training (OET). The following five rules are necessary to make OET work successfully in your shop.

Why does it seem that there is never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do something over?  If you want to be a proactive organization it will pay huge dividends if everyone concentrates on doing their job right the first time - even if it takes a little longer to make sure it is right.  And by doing it right the first time, you not only increase your company's efficiencies, but you can also have an immediate impact on customer loyalty, retention and overall profits.

The other day, if I had taken the time to take one stair at a time, I probably would have stepped in just as the meeting began and wouldn't have scattered my papers.  If I'd taken the time to consider WHY I was running late and avoid those conditions next time, perhaps I'd have found out more about the root cause of my problem. Do you ever find yourself wanting to "take the stairs 2 at a time" to do a little more in your current role?  What helps you avoid this temptation?  Please share your thoughts with us.

When you find yourself feeling most like you have to hurry, that is the time to take a breath and proceed with purpose and not rush. I find myself giving this advice quite often.

Or you can show this 47 second video! In "real time", you can see how quickly the customer receives their order. You can see the reduction in inventory. You can see less work in process. And you can see the order fulfilled in 29 seconds vs 60. Half the time! Imagine how much time you save with a longer chain of processes. Because the video's so short, you can easily work it into your session, between phases of a lean game or after a more intensive sit and listen session.

A common response is "Mark, that makes sense… but we just don't have time…." I'd like to make the case that "lack of time" should not be an excuse that shuts down the possibility for Kaizen, but rather it's the first problem statement to which we can apply our Kaizen thinking…

Great headline!

A push system, where work is foisted upon a department from the outside, by its very nature will lead to overloading a system and exploding lead times. A pull system, where work is taken from a pile of projects by the people doing the work when they're ready for it, ensures that the department matches inputs and outputs for maximum efficiency. Interestingly, this approach is rare. There's a tendency in the office environment to treat "production" capacity as infinite. Partly this tendency is due to people's willingness to work late into the night or on weekends. Partly this tendency is due to the difficulty of calculating how much time a particular project will take. Inherent in knowledge work is the inability to take a project to completion in a smooth, uninterrupted flow.

Pick a process to start and "pull"

How about JT production. JTs are currently pushed into the Planning Dept from Program Mgt. Let's see how we would install a pull system.

Reducing machine down time is the main goal of set-up reduction. However, reducing set-up times will boost your company's capacity, increase your manufacturing flexibility, and help increase overall output.

Time management is not always all it's cracked up to be. Most people who follow time management programs find that they actually decrease their productivity and effectiveness. If you want to get things done, focus less on managing time and more on yourself and the things you're working to accomplish.

The Buddy Wheel is an easy way, that takes advantage of Visual Management Principles, to manage resources and responsibilities: People and Time. Another aspect in managing people and time is the aspect of who and when - because here we're talking about essentially a round robin of people.

During one of my training opportunities a Toyota Sensei once told me that the highest form of "respect for people" was allowing people to solve their own problems.  This statement stuck with me and I have often used this during training/coaching sessions.  Apparently, this statement also stuck with my friend.  In the hallway last week he said after a year of gemba he finally understood his role as a leader and what I meant when I talked about "respect for people."   He said at first he loved the Lean approach, because he loved being in gemba, but after a while the follow-up became overwhelming to him and frustrating to the teams he worked with.  He said each time he went to gemba he felt guilty about the increasing number of problems he was not having the time to solve.

This morning I had a ton of work to do, and I felt the anxiety building, the moment I woke up and started thinking about all that work. Instead of getting moving, I watched my anxiety. It's an interesting feeling of rising panic, of adrenaline shooting from my chest outward. My mind was racing, my heart was beating fast. This happens to me from time to time - I feel like I have so much to do, and I start to worry. I've learned to deal with it, so that while it still comes up, I now have trust that I'll be fine. And that, in turn, helps it to go away sooner. So what do you do when you're overwhelmed and have a crapload of work to do?

When I asked the president at Anvex how he trained his managers, he answered, "Every manager must work inside the manufacturing process for a period of time. It is important for them to understand how their decisions within their department will affect the rest of the organization, otherwise it is impossible for them to make assertive decisions. Every single manager knows perfectly well what happens in each process because their desks are in the middle of the operation. This way they know when something happens as it is happening and not hours afterward. We do not have offices, they are not considered necessary. Private issues or problems are handled in conference or training rooms."

This is completely true. You need to know and understand for 100% all the processes in your manufacturing process.

As part of our onboarding process every person needs to spend time in the Mfg areas. I think we could widen this and say they need to spend time in each operation area. When I worked at L&L this was a requirement before you could actually begin the job you were hired for.

I struggle with how to do this in the more "administrative" type departments.

Our target condition is a stable process with reduced, more consistent cycle times as less time is spent hunting for things. Though we may see a correlation between 5S audit scores and stability, it is all to easy to focus on the score and forget the reason.

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".

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).

Too often improvement is left to chance and the ingenuity of the willing to eke out small pockets of time - and make magic happen. We all know these people. They see the vision burning brightly before them and are determined to make it happen. Time and again, these people prove - with their own mental, emotional, and physical health - the familiar adage: Where there's a will, there's a way.