Lean Facilitation
The five pillars of lean are easy to state; less easy to implement in real life:
- Focus on building Value for Customer: how do we identify and measure customer value ?
- Organise by Value Stream: how do we define our Value Streams and what about support and corporate functions ?
- Flow and Pull. Value is created through flow and cost is directly related to flow – waste impedes flow and increases cost. Pull means only making what the customer wants: but how do we create level, stable pull and flow ?
- Empower People by creating a lean culture where managers practice what they preach: how do we deal with the politics of organisation structures and history?
- Pursue perfection through continuous improvement: how do we get past the demand for quick fixes and "making the numbers" ?
Lean Facilitation – Empowering People
In Lean Facilitation we are particularly concerned with empowering people. There are two ways of improving productivity – working faster; or working smarter. In the West, productivity gains through working harder are increasingly difficult to get, and working smarter is the only real alternative to relocating in a low wage economy. Quick and Easy Kaizen provides a process for working smarter right across the organisation.
Traditional suggestion schemes fail because they are impersonal, bureaucratic and costly. It can take weeks for the individual to get feedback, and these schemes remove responsibility for implementation from the individual and put it onto management – adding to their workload and eliminating the element of individual initiative.
Quick and Easy Kaizen is a way to get all employees involved and participating in identifying improvements and being part of the problem solving process. Most importantly, it focuses on implementing ideas, not on raising suggestions for others to progress.
Quick and Easy Kaizen helps develop a fully participative and involved workforce, focusing on improvement. It encourages people to become responsible for their company' success, and at the same time encourages people to grow personally. We love to learn, and by learning we do things better and improve – that is kaizen.
Quick and Easy Kaizen helps towards many questions which managers pose:
- How do I motivate my employees ?
- How do I get my employees to become more involved and take more ownership of their jobs ?
- How can we all work together to better service internal and external customers ?
- How can I help make people feel personally responsible for our company’s success ?
- How do I get my employees excited about their work ?
- How do I get my employees involved in improvement activities ?
- How can I foster and administer change activities ?
- How can I lead by example ?
The key to success is to have an overarching and coordinated strategy, and fully committed management team.
The strategy deployed for the organisation as a whole will link into a strategy for each Value Stream, and for support functions such as marketing, customer relations, HR, quality, environment, safety and health, logistics, engineering and so on. These strategies will include individual kaizen and 5S activities, as well as training programmes to develop lean skills, and actions to create a culture of involvement, problem solving and real continuous improvement. This is lean facilitation.
Lean Facilitation includes:
Ideas into Action can help in all areas of lean facilitation:
- Lean Leadership
- Identifying Value Streams and setting Value Stream goals and measures;
- Running kaizen and 5S events;
- Implementing a "Quick and Easy Kaizen" process involving all staff in improvement;
- Training in problem solving, project management and other lean tools;
- Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training;
- Developing a culture of true continuous improvement right across the organisation, where kaizen is a daily activity.
Please contact us to arrange a meeting to discuss your requirements.