Tweddle Continuous Improvement

Even marketing folks use visual management boards!

Just a good, basic article on zero defects

Zero defects is a philosophy of Lean. It simply means that every process should be designed so that it is impossible to produce poor quality. The underlying premise, which is true in nearly every case, is that the cost of preventing problems is lower than the cost of fixing them.

Perhaps a little hard to tell, but there's an identical air conditioning unit in every single little office. Hundreds of them (it's a large building). I saw similar examples with large apartment buildings. Is central air a waste? Sure there's some production efficiency in large-scale utilities - wait did I just say that? But how much of that efficiency is wasted when it is delivered to areas that don't necessarily need it. Would smaller units that can be easily turned off create greater aggregate system efficiency? Aggregate "actual in use" efficiency vs. the "large scale production efficiency"? It's the same issue that electric cars and makers of single-home power plants (solar, geo, etc) are wrestling with.

I don't know about this one.

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.

Gotta love Ohno quotes! I think I'm going to have to get this book. Wakamatsu then shared this response from Taiichi Ohno: This answer infuriated Taiichi Ohno. "I learned how to figure out 8 x 2 = 16 in elementary school. I had never thought I would learn that again from you when I am this old. Do not treat me like a fool"

If our process is perfect today, and everyone continues their job, waste will still increase. Why? There are perhaps many reasons, but none more undeniable than the fact that conditions change. Data changes, regulation changes, customer expectations change, and of course even the people in the organization change. Every one of these changes affects the conditions under which our process was designed for perfection.

Tips for Continuous Improvement

Where could we try this? It sounds like a great technique.

We've been attempting to do this with our daily huddle's in POD & Pressroom. I'm going to put this article in front of the innovation team today and see what we can get going. This technique can be used in any of our production teams and perhaps if we put scheduling & production together for a bit we could build some trust between the two.

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It's built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

As you all know, a horizontal surface can become a potential area for items to accumulate. When it comes to workbenches, it seems that they have far too many things on them and are much bigger than the need to be.

How do you start a Gemba Walk in your plant? It may seem overwhelming but it doesn't need to be.  Don't walk into the workplace looking for everything.  If you do, you will accomplish nothing while causing confusion. This simple list is a good place to start.  Use this list to build your own Gemba Walk theme.

Our process is different Why people believe this: Most people have a limited view of other processes, and don't see the similarities. Many cultures also value independence, so people are biased towards seeing uniqueness in their processes. The truth: There is a great deal of overlap in processes, and most are not as unique as people think they are. As a Lean consultant, I see new processes and methods with every project, but the majority of the tasks people do are things I've seen before. How to overcome this: Have a couple of go-to people to talk to the group that is experiencing change. They should be people who have recently used Lean to improve their process. Teams believe each other far more than they believe their bosses.

"Many cultures also value independence, so people are biased towards seeing uniqueness in their processes." Certainly our culture!

Agreed Paul.

Interesting idea -- A Kaizen newspaper

Stop rewarding wrong behaviors. We love a hero. On the shop floor, that is the person who miraculously pulls a part from a secret stash, or bypasses a process to 'make things happen.' As long as leaders reward that sort of heroism, there will be little focus on fixing processes.

So, think of standard work more as a verb and less as a noun. Next time when you're at the gemba, take note of the revision date of the standard work sheets and standard work combination sheets. If they haven't been updated and improved over the last quarter or two, then you might have an issue. There's a good chance that you've never left the land of system-driven kaizen.

Some good stuff scattered throughout this article.

Great visual control!