Many people and organisations outside of the lean community are wary of the concept of standardised work. The belief, probably arising from the terminology, is that standardised work means detailed unchangeable work instructions imposed on others, “robotising” work and, therefore, removing the scope for individual flair or creativity.
Posted by Ross Maynard on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 read more...
One of the keys to a successful lean accounting implementation is getting your Value Streams right. That is not to say you cannot change your defined Value Streams once you set them (indeed many organisations do change their Value Streams over time) but rather aligning your costs to Value Streams will only help drive improvement if that alignment is meaningful. Go too deep and you will have too few direct costs and very
many unallocated "support" costs. This is meaningless. Stay at too high a level and the financial data will be too aggregated to be of use in operational improvement.
Posted by Ross Maynard on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 read more...
In lean, we are familiar with the concept of “Value Adding” activities – those activities which transform a product, service, information or cash in a way which the customer would be willing to pay for. The purpose of “lean”, of course, is to remove non-value-adding activities (i.e. waste) and, thus, create free capacity which we can use for more value-adding activities which (with the same level of resources) generates more profit.
In accounting, we also have the term “Value Added”. This has a specific definition and is the sales value of output less the value of all external inputs. That is to say that “Value Added” is sales income less the cost of bought-in goods and services.
Posted by Ross Maynard on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 read more...
With many books and resources on the subject, some expounding complex symbols and definitions, Value Stream Mapping can seem difficult and offputting. In fact it is straightforward and the best way to get started is with simple "Post It" (TM) notes. There are some good "how-to" videos on YouTube. Here are my favourites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mcMwlgUFjU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R5Mv486oQQ&feature=related
As for the data you should collect. Try this for a starter set (the bold items being the critical ones):
Happy mapping !
Posted by Ross Maynard on Mon, 31 May 2010 read more...
Our 15 day NLP Master Practitioner programme is certified by INLPTA, the leading international register. The programme starts in September and is delivered over four long weekends – one per month – until January 2011. Contact us for a full course outline.
Posted by Ross Maynard on Mon, 24 May 2010 read more...