Tweddle Continuous Improvement

Interesting thoughts about decisions, simplification and lean thinking.

Excellent ideas!

Great article! Time to outsource some decisions if you ask me...

Consider, however: When there are sudden customer orders that must get shipped, or power outages, or fires and other emergencies, most employees come to life and get things done with spirit and enthusiasm. When 33 miners were trapped in a cave-in in Chile in 2010, the experts estimated that, with luck, they might possibly be rescued in four months. The rescue crews in fact got them all to the surface in two months. When Apollo 13 was aborted, programmers re-wrote some software in three days instead of the usual three months. These must-do situations all have some common elements that evoke the remarkable performance: A sharply focused, urgent goal A very tight deadline Autonomous team encouraged to experiment Results clearly noticed and celebrated Our experience shows that by designing jobs with these game-like characteristics and infusing a spirit of fun it is possible to enliven work and produce the kind of high-level, zesty behavior provoked by crises.

CLOSED MITT is an acronym used to categorize waste. It expands on the traditional '7 Wastes' that are frequently used in lean efforts.

Good article about how to use 5S to solve problems.

Please read this brilliantly simple system of ordering at Waffle House.

I just observed the same things mentioned in this article while "dining" on my recent trip down south! I was noticing some of the same things, especially how the cook was just listening for the order and where the waitress stood to make the request. It is a very systematic system and works well. Any problems I've ever encountered at Waffle House have been with things like late or no coffee refills and such and have rarely if ever been problems with the order itself. Perhaps this article warrants further investigation!

"I spent so much time putting out fires until I realized I was the oxygen." - John Toussaint, MD Unfortunately, a far too common management style in many companies is the reactionary style commonly referred to as fire fighting. But fire fighting consumes an organization's resources and damages productivity. Fire fighting derives from what seems like a reasonable set of rules--investigate all problems, for example, or assign the most difficult problems to your best troubleshooter. Ultimately, however, fire-fighting organizations fail to solve problems adequately. Fire fighting prevents us from getting to the root cause. And if we don't get to the root of problem we will be right back to fire fighting soon.

Kinda Cool presentation!

How do you fill in the blank? Your answer to this ques­tion has a tremen­dous impact on the deci­sions you make, how you lead and ulti­mately the results you get in busi­ness and in life. I have asked sev­eral audi­ences this ques­tion over the past few months, and the responses have been every­thing from fail­ure defines me to fright­ens me to teaches me and aids me.

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.

How could we use this in POD for example? Obviously, the manufacturer has taken an existing batch process, moved to single piece flow and seen tremendous results. The benefits are clear. Reduced inventory and faster delivery times. This alone will make any manufacturer more competitive. But lean doesn't stop here. Any process can be optimized and, when cost and space allows, moving to a flexible work cell is the logical next step.

In your workplace, do people act like shopowners?  Do they do work extra hard to take care of the shop, own its processes, design its delivery of goods and services, and constantly seek out innovative ways to provide value?  Are they looking for ways to grow the business, since that growth leads to both stability and prosperity?

While workplaces don't have commanders, they do have leaders. So the same principle of intent holds true in the civilian world. If you are a manager and your team knows how you define success, they will be able to make decisions in your absence. That is a critically important skill for a highly functioning team to develop

One of the challenges of teaching and consulting is resisting the temptation to give people the answers. Honestly, I like giving people the answers. It feels genuinely helpful, and it provides a nice ego boost. But according to this article on Time's "Time Ideas" site by Anne Murphy Paul titled " Why Floundering is Good," that isn't the best way to teach. In fact, it can hinder learning.

Fundamental to understanding any process and eventually generating practical ideas for improvement is to ask the 5W's and 1H. So, here's the definition of the 5W and 1H.

"But, we got the parts in and shipped the units. I thought we handled that quite well," protested Valerie.

"You are right, your supervisor did a good job. That's what supervisors do. But your work, as a manager, was not done," I replied. "The job of the manager is to create the system. When you discovered you would be short of parts, it was your supervisors job to go find the parts, but it was your job to ask

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.

"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.

When using drawers to store equipment, one expression stands out: Out of sight, out of mind. Things in a drawer tend to get piled up, misplaced, and forgotten about. Drawers take time to open and close, and slow down processes. They hide things. Bottom line: Drawers are fine for storage, but they hinder 5S and flow in a production environment.

I don't agree with every point in this article, but I like his point about understanding the process before you set a goal. The setting of target conditions as goals is also something to think about.

Take a look at the video, and then the flowchart beneath it (click on the flowchart for the full size version), then we will discuss what this has to do with lean thinking.