Tweddle Continuous Improvement

Good tips & thoughts.

I love this!

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.

"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

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.

Nice summary & video

When a company engages its people in problem solving as part of their daily work, they feel more motivated, they do their jobs better, the organization's performance improves, and a virtuous cycle starts to turn. Such an approach can tap enormous potential for the company and its customers.

Lean goes beyond the tools to challenge our way of thinking. It is about learning to see opportunities and continually improving them. Lean is a system of tools and people that work together.

"Embrace the suck!"

Might be a good read.

"Don't be too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet!" 
- Overheard by Colleague

A Lean Enterprise is centered on the concept of flow. Flow is one of five key Lean Principles identified by Womack and Jones in their book Lean Thinking. They stressed that you need to make value flow. It was this creation of flow that would make it possible to eliminate waste. When material and information flow continuously, there is less waste in the system. This is true by definition. If there were a lot of waste, material and information would not be flowing.

It would be bold... where do we start!?

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.

While I'm not a fan of trying to be disciplined every moment of the day, there's no doubt most of us could use a little more discipline in our lives.

Excellent / practical article!

I see many applications at Tweddle for checklists.

Mindfulness has been receiving wide attention lately in countless books, published research papers and mainstream business literature. The physical and psychological benefits of mindfulness are indisputable, and the implications for coaching, behavioral change, and leadership development are profound. Coaches and clients alike can leverage their change work through these simple tips.

It turns out that the same set of actions will address both of these two things: 1) setting up the right habit environment, and 2) making habit success your only option, so that you can start trusting yourself.

Accurate problem statements save time and effort when they contain all these elements: Keep it brief Avoid technical language Quantify the problem - Don't solve it! Explain the costs Define the scope State the consequences/benefits of possible solutions

Some excellent personal development/learning apps in here. Experiment with one.

Often managers spot a chance to do something valuable for their company, but for some reason, they cannot get started. Even if they begin the project, they give up when they see the first big hurdle. The inability to take purposeful action seems to be pervasive across companies. Managers tend to ignore or postpone dealing with crucial issues which require reflection, systematic planning, creative thinking, and above all, time.