Often, managers overwhelm their employees with massive amounts of information in a short period. The outcome is "information overload" and confusion. An analogy is the sponge. It will absorb only so much and will reach a saturation point where it will absorb no more. When this happens to employees, they learn only what is necessary to get by or just those subjects that come easily to them. The rest does not get soaked up and falls by the wayside. The solution is to break down training into bite-size pieces that can be readily digested, absorbed and put to work in the field.

Ideally, poka-yoke ensures that proper conditions exist before actually executing a process step, preventing defects from occurring in the first place. Where this is not possible, poka-yoke performs a detective function, eliminating defects in the process as early as possible. This can be achieved by following the 6 principles or methods of mistake proofing. These are listed in order of priority in fundamentally addressing mistakes:

The FMEA Tool (Failure, Modes, Effects, Analysis) is a powerful tool available to a Lean Six Sigma practitioner. The tool is extensively used where a safety critical environment exists, such as the aerospace or automotive industry. The tool allows a team the ability to design quality and safety into processes or products on the front end of the environment, eliminating potential problems before they occur.

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?

Could we use this game in our 5S class?

In my experience there are 5 tools that can help with a Visual Workplace and 5S efforts:

Shingo Principle of the Month: Seek Perfection

"The passionate pursuit of perfection--even when it is fundamentally impossible to achieve--brings out the best in every human being."
- Shigeo Shingo

I'm not always a fan of deadlines and goals, but it's good to be able to use whatever works best for you. If you're working great without deadlines and goals, then by all means, keep going. But if you're struggling to push a project forward (or a learning project like language lessons), then you might try a self-imposed deadline. Here are some things that work for me:

Kaizen as a methodology has the ability to speed up that change process and more importantly finalize the solutions into standardized processes expeditiously. This benefits the organization by not having "floating" processes in place and the end-user by making a seamless process easy to use. Kaizen does this by having a structured approach, with specific deliverables, and ownership of the changes after the Kaizen is completed.

Interesting approach to reading non-fiction books.

A good manager is acutely aware of what they know and why they know it, as well as what they don't know. They understand the difference between opinions, hunches, and objective facts. A good manager knows that their job is to fill in these gaps in knowledge, not to defend them. Good managers don't ruin their credibility by over-stating their knowledge.

It is said that performance is related to housekeeping and workplace organization. It is a first step to improving operating results. The 5S Tool is a common sense approach to improve the visual control in the workplace. The decision-making process usually comes from a dialogue about standardization, which builds understanding among employees of how they should do the work. It can apply to both manufacturing and the service setting.

"The general answer to this question from today's webinar is that if people don't find a particular tool purposeful, they don't use it. More specifically for poka-yoke, there are seven reasons team members do not see the tool as purposeful:

Good tips & thoughts.

Uncertainty may darken the entire horizon, but not everyone is affected equally.   The edge often goes to those who can learn quickly. "For the military," Petraeus observed, "learning faster than the enemy meant deploying lessons learned teams and ensuring commanders are focused on identifying the need to make changes to our big ideas, campaign plans, organizational structures, equipment, and operational bases." For companies, learning faster than competitors can mean incorporating a "What have we learned?" discussion into weekly or daily team meetings. Whatever the size of your organization, don't stop the learning with an observation. Drive to change behaviors.

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.).

But what is best quality for products and services involving multiple people in a more complex supply chain? What is quality at the source, why does it matter? Quality must be defined by whoever the end customer is, so there is not one definition. However, when a company commits to producing according to the quality characteristics desired by its end-consumer, doing the right thing the first time will help deliver a product of the desired quality and at a predictable cost. When quality is not built into every step of the way, defects get passed on and produce unnecessary waste, potentially compromising the end result and making for a more expensive overall operation. Our customers (and our associates) "taste" the quality of our products and services every single day. Let us create a flavor that has them coming back for more.

"An organization relying only on audits with no quality training is like a teacher administering only surprise exams with no teaching; the result is poor quality." - Aly Basyouny, PGESCO

Nice summary & video