Author: ben

How can you develop a continuous improvement a your company’s internal skills?

Despite efforts to better understand Lean, we notice there’s a scarcity of resources trained in the field of continuous improvement for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Admittedly, this is more practical than theoretical field of expertise; the experience gained on the ground is valuable and hard to replace.

Another challenge is that Lean methodologies can sometimes be too complex or expensive to implement in an SME.

So, how to implement a Lean culture?

Obtain concrete commitment from senior management for all process optimization projects

Easier said than done? Not really.  For example, the presence of a senior manager at the launch and closing of a Kaizen event will undoubtedly help mobilize participants.

Training different levels of management

The acquisition of skills by key people (especially supervisors) allows the development of formal knowledge transfer mechanisms. This ensures that skills acquired during continuous improvement projects can be retained and used for future projects.

Without training on the best supervisory practices, performance gains from process optimization risk disappearing with time.

Building Confidence

Senior management’s confidence in the staff is fundamental. It is imperative that management frees up both human and financial resources for Lean projects so that they translate into increased performance.

Conversely, the staff must have confidence in Lean methods.  Too many projects fail because they have been presented in the wrong way.  The “business” experts are not the consultants or the managers, but the employees on the ground who do the work!

In short, you need to create a culture of teamwork and collaboration.

Managing Change

Continuous improvement changes the way things are done and introduces new ways of managing. This is why change management must be applied to this type of project.

Is it necessary to remember that the human factor must not be neglected?  To this end, training and communication plans are the focus of all change management (before, during and after each continuous improvement project).

Measuring results

Finally, it’s necessary to put mechanisms in place to monitor the performance of people who have acquired Lean skills. On the one hand, you must measure their performance to ensure that gains have been made and, in other cases, you must understand why it hasn’t worked.

The importance of measuring indicators during the implementation of new skills cannot be overstated.

The quote of the week:

« The whole is better than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business. In the company, great things are not done by one man, but by one team. »  Steve Jobs

Question : Is continuous improvement always costly and complicated? 

Not necessarily!  It’s possible to undertake a Lean approach, the objective of which is to optimise processes as quickly as possible. Continuous improvement is possible even in a context of very limited financial, human and material resources. Let us recall the Pareto principle that 80% of the effects are often attributable to 20% of the causes. Thus, eliminating significant waste can restore the performance of failed processes.

The steps

Regardless of the scope of continuous improvement projects, they steps are often very similar: defining the need, mapping the process, identifying causes and effects, and then finding a solution. An action plan and a control plan provide a framework to ensure the success of the process.

In fact, it is mainly the complexity of the problem and the availability of resources that will determine the ideal format for the process.

Question: When undertaking a continuous improvement process, should all operations be reviewed?

Answer :

Small changes can have a quick impact without disrupting your daily activities or requiring significant effort.  If you can reduce the length of a process, eliminate unnecessary tasks, or lower the cost of manufacturing a product, you’ll see long-term gains.  It all comes down to an analysis of the situation or, if you prefer, a diagnosis of the process.  For example, if employees have to leave their workstations to speak with their supervisors, this results in production stoppages, wasted time and unnecessary travel. A simple and effective solution would be to bring the telephones closer to the workstations, thus increasing the company’s productivity. 

Big Benefits

Never forget = a small change (20%) can generate big benefits (80%).  A training on best supervision practices helps support everything in order to implement good habits of participative management on the ground.  Simple, inexpensive and advantageous solution for all!

The solution to waste can be simple to implement and may not require any particular investment in terms of resources.

In short, it is essentially about:

• The right thing
• At the right time
• In the right place
• No more, no less

This maximizes value added (VA) and eliminates non-value added (NVA).

• VA = What the customer wants, a critical activity that directly contributes to meeting their need.
• NVA= Everything else, any non-essential activity.

A few simple and effective tools

• 5S (Separate-Sort, Locate-Store, Sparkle-Clean, Standardize, Follow-Involve)
• Kaizen, kaizen-blitz, Rapid Improvement Event (waste identification workshops with employees on the floor)
• Process mapping (method used to illustrate and sort the activities of a work process)
• Kanban (visual management, just in time)
• Bottlenecks (value production can only be increased by increasing production capacity at the level of a bottleneck).

All these continuous improvement tools are based on the same simple and effective principles:

• Constantly trying to do better.
• Knowing you are never perfect, but knowing perfectly well that you will be better than before.
• It’s an endless loop with an intensity that varies according to your company’s priorities.

To resume, it’ isn’t always necessary to use expensive means to solve a problem.  A good diagnosis of your production system, proven process optimization methods and training on best supervisory practices can, more often than not, help you achieve your performance goals.

Quote of the Week: “There is nothing more useless than doing very effectively something useless” (Peter F. Drucker)