Tweddle Continuous Improvement

A creative way to create a ritual to build habits!

Although it's generally understood that it costs more to deal with crises than to prevent them, many companies do not recognize and reward those who push past the symptoms to the root causes, preventing future occurrences. If you want to focus on prevention, be sure to reward those who do it successfully.

The first question should be "Tell me what about your 2010 Tacoma is currently unacceptable to you?"

So what should we do? Well to start with, we should work to define the key systems within our organisation and its wider supply chain. Second, we should review how these work from a technical point of view, but more importantly from a behavioural point of view. Third, we should prioritise improvement activity by systems based on the importance of the system and how far your current practices differ from the ideal. Fourth, we should ensure we develop a discipline to maintain and further improve these systems.

We ran into this today, where we made a change and forgot to inform accounting. I am eager to employ these principles to ensure that we do not have a repeat.

What are our "people improvement" metrics?

We have the last two listed being tracked. Let's consider some of the others.

It is difficult to assure quality at the source if leaders do not respect all associates. I have seen companies with people who do not feel comfortable reporting quality concerns at the gemba, because they are ignored or "punished" if they stop the line to report a problem. This creates an atmosphere of fear, and quality issues slip out the door reaching the customer and creates a snowball of problems for everyone.

OK, that's all great … but how do we incorporate failure and learning and shipping into a method for changing habits?

This is simply a "bias for action" and grit. Am I oversimplifying?

No, but some people need different ways to hear concepts and different techniques to help implement.

Putting people and tools on the line to catch defects created by another process is a sign of not showing respect in the inherent capability of the people to do good work. Instead, management has to spend time and energy in creating processes that are capable and can catch errors and mistakes by themselves leading to continuous improvement. Dr. Shigeo Shingo preached these concepts when he talked about zero quality control. According to Dr. Shingo, we cannot achieve the aim of zero defects until we make each element of the process capable to produce perfect quality by ensuring the errors and mistakes are quickly identified and corrected before they lead to defects. His idea of poka-yoke and source checking are exactly in line with this principle.

How could we avoid this from happening with our cross check process?

Let's set it as a vision and then design in 6-8 month improvement targets. The vision can be a year or two out and we can steadily march toward the vision with incremental targets.

Skipping exercise to work or play is like trying to increase your checking account by starving your retirement fund. It doesn't actually work. We're just redistributing pleasure and pain-more pleasure now, more pain later.

"A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there." - Unknown

What do you do if your life is a mess, you have no discipline or routines, can't stick to anything, procrastinate, and feel out of control?

Leaders should adopt a 'gemba mentality' Firstly, leaders on a gemba walk need to realise that they cannot and should not provide the answers and solutions to the problems they encounter. They are primarily there to coach the process owners to take ownership of solving problems and developing solutions to make the process more effective and efficient, while also eliminating waste. It is the leader's role to ensure that all the people who are involved in the process are actively engaged in improving it.

It seems that since the beginning of time we've all learned, "Lean is about continuously developing people and improving processes to create and flow value to customers using the least possible resources required." Value of products and services is created through a series of work processes, some which create value and some that definitely do not (think of rework, inspection, waiting and expedited shipping). One objective of operational excellence and lean is to eliminate non-value added work to improve the flow of value to our customers, the result of which is shorter delivery cycles and higher levels of quality. Some people describe this as "creating value as efficiently and effectively as possible." 

That's what decluttering is: taking time to decide what's important enough to remain in your life. It's not about getting rid of everything, or emptying your life completely. It's about figure out what matters to you. And then getting rid of what doesn't.

The disorganized accumulation of papers and coffee cups scattered across your desk may help you project the impression that you're working at full throttle, but in fact it's probably dragging you down. We've found that people sitting at messy desks are less efficient, less persistent, and more frustrated and weary than those at neat desks.

OK - this is a challenging topic for me.

What's challenging about it?

"Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. As Harold F. Dodge said, "You can not inspect quality into a product." - W. Edwards Deming, Out of Crisis, Page 29

Love the simplicity of this

5S is a process and method for creating and maintaining an organized, clean, and high performance workplace.  It enables anyone to distinguish between normal and abnormal conditions at a glance.  5S can be the foundation for continuous improvement, zero defects, cost reductions and a more productive work space.  The 5S methodology is a systematic way to improve the workplace, processes and products through employee involvement.

To embrace scientific thinking one believes deeply in the process of experimentation, is curious about "what if," sets aside prejudices and remains open to possibilities. The scientific thinker bases decisions and actions on facts and data as well as intuition and emotion. An organizational culture that embraces scientific thinking expects and supports people and teams at all levels to be "scientists," passionately and relentlessly looking for and systematically trying new and better ways to do practically everything

Since our goals represent the things that matter most to us, shouldn't we fight for them? Aren't our greatest hopes worth overcoming the resistance?