Tweddle Continuous Improvement

Pulling form a common pile of work.  We don't do it often.  Why not?

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.

Four solid concepts - good video.

I re-watched it, and, while I still fundamentally disagree with the first two points (No more visionary speeches and No Couch Meetings), I did find value in his comments of instructing through results and not outsourcing your training. The idea that you cannot outsource your culture, which is a function of your training is powerful.

Great Video for Film Festival

Kaizen: FastCap Style

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".

Most process improvement efforts often miss the first step: What is the Purpose of the Process? When that question is asked first, it enables one to then ask an additional question: Should This Process Need to Exist?

Is this series of videos something that someone would organize a learning experience around?  I would love to attend.

And she is right. It makes no sense, based on her experience, to work hard to expose waste. Unless. Unless you and I, leaders in our organizations, act differently as well. Unless we demonstrate exposing waste gets rewarded, not punished. Unless we walk the talk ourselves. Unless we say thank you. Unless we demonstrate respect for her opinion. That's trust. And, without it, all the waste we so nobly hope to find remains hidden. Keep on learning.

The Title was just too funny not to post!

a look at the companies leading the way in lean manufacturing that includes GM, Kellogg and Lockheed Martin

That would be Grrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

I'm having trouble putting "Frosted Flakes" and "Lean" in the same topic.

Project Mgt & Lean

The report-out is the beginning of kaizen, not the end. The next phase is not "follow-up." It is a natural continuation, if less intense, of the kaizen process. The report-out is describing an engineering prototype. Now it is time to test it and discover what we didn't know during the design process.

Frequently missed, but a great point...

Going to the gemba to understand what is really happening, digging for facts especially when they contradict popular perception, developing a strategy, and communicating that strategy to stakeholders and customers. That's leadership, law enforcement style.

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

Great suggestion...

At this factory, the manager became a Saw-Muri warrior.  He was now sensitized to a common but invisible productivity and morale killer.  Too often however, managers don't see Muri.  They put a person in a stressful job, and he will occasionally have to rest.  This is sometimes referred to by those managers who can't see Muri as "dogging it."  

I loved this part of the article - so true: "Standing with a management team from a large manufacturer on a receiving dock at a distribution center, we watched a truck being unloaded. The worker meticulously checked and double-checked part counts against the manifest as the freight was loaded onto the dock. One senior manager who was standing near to the worker audibly remarked to our group, "This is what happens when we pay by the hour" (dogging it). The worker then turned to the manager and retorted, "No, this is happening now because last week I got my a&%^ reamed by my supervisor for miscounting." Mental Muri."

There are some great ideas in here. I love labeling the light switches, because we went a couple of days last week where the lights in the front office were off since no one knew where the swtch was. Color coding the printer / printer cartridge is brilliant. Instruction sheets for office equipment...

I'm going to use this in my 5S class on Thrusday.

This poorly made cartoon does a nice job with a cautionary tale about problem solving.