I would like to wish each and everyone one of my readers a Happy New Year, I hope I can continue to bring more value-added posts to you in 2013!
So my last post of the year is shared from my contribution on theleanedge.org hosted by Michael Balle'.
The question is in regard to the Ringo-sho process. Some of you may be saying "what is that?" It is a Japanese term and was used during my time at Toyota.
The question on the website is from:
Lean Global Network: Can you clarify the role of “ringi” in lean?"What is Ringi? The Lean Edge has discussed Nemawashi, but could you clarify the practice of Ringi? How is this linked to A3? How widespread is its use within Toyota? Should that practice be adopted by lean thinkers?"
I will have to admit when I saw the word Ringi in this question, it brought back many memories of my time at Toyota (TMMK). It’s not a word I’ve used or heard much since my time there, even though the thinking behind it could be more common if expressed differently.
As others have mentioned above Ringi or (Ringi-sho) is not necessarily a Toyota creation, it is a Japanese term which when translated (with help from John Shook) means:
A high-level formal authorization/approval process, usually for major policy matters, major projects and represents formal agreement (through nemawashi) of the authorizing parties (always including finance). It is a specific application of A3 (as a document size), used to (to repeat) garner formal authorization for those major policy matters and projects. It is finalized in a formal A3 called a ringi-sho (sho means “document”) that is signed by the authorizers, usually the top executives of the related departments or affected areas or functions of the company.
So as you can see no matter what you decide to label this process (remember its not about what we call these “tools” its the thinking behind them) the importance of it seems to reside around the “approval process” of a project described at a high level which needs financial authorization at an executive level as well buy-in.
It is often necessary to link the project to the Hoshin Kanri goals in order to measure the key performance indicator impact (i.e – Cost, Productivity, Quality, Safety, and Human Resources) otherwise known as ROI (Return on investment) this could be spread over several years. I think a common misnomer about Ringi-sho is because its linked to A3 its often label as a problem solving A3 and this is not necessarily the case. It could stem from a problem happening which a proposal or project could evolve from but a Ringi-sho is more about the financial aspect and approval process at the highest affected levels.
Once a Ringi-sho has been approved then its given a Ringi-sho account number, this number is then attached to any spending / cost around this designated project through Accounting. This project could be a few months in time to a couple of years depending upon the complexity of the project and everything it entails.
So Sammy’s example above touches on capital type expenditures as in- (equipment, buildings, expansions, company events and services). Usually a Ringi-sho is created for higher dollar projects that could be in any range. This could be an area where your specific company could set their own parameters around when you needed high level approval for finances or not.
The important aspect to remember is the relationship to Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment), so once its approved financially and all signatures are completed then it begins to cascade downward to the related areas/departments who will begin to follow through with the project plan and this is where you could see the spawning of the “kanri cycle” which are micro PDCA activities that will take place in order to see the project from start to finish lead by the originator of the Ringi-sho. Each one of these Kanri-cycles could have a status report to ensure that the project stays on task, any contingencies should be reported at this point if it could effect the project plan.
Once a Ringi-sho is deemed “closed” meaning that the project is completed in regard to the financial aspect, then the account number is then closed as well. If at any point in the future some unforeseen cost arises that are related to that closed project a new Ringi-sho would have to be approved for addition funds.
So in the world of “Lean” I believe this “approval process” can be very value added to any company ensuring that funds are spent appropriately for ROI, and communication and authorization to all related parties become a standard practice.
This summarization of Ringi-sho is strictly based on my 10 yrs experience working in production at TMMK and dealing with projects related to the Plastics department and how we used this process to ensure proper approval and allocation of budgets all related to our department Hoshin as it related to the Plant Hoshin (TMMK).
Until next time,
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Last post of 2012 - Happy New Year!!!
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Caused versus Created gap A3's (Problem Solving vs Proposal / Strategy)
I thought I would share this short video clip I did at the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) @leandotorg in Cambridge, MA.
This clip gives a brief description of "caused" versus "created" gaps, and which A3 format do you use for each one.
I teach several different types of courses for LEI, 3 of them particularly involve training around Problem Solving A3's:
Please take a look!!
http://youtu.be/VNUpQUFmADk
Until next time,
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
This clip gives a brief description of "caused" versus "created" gaps, and which A3 format do you use for each one.
I teach several different types of courses for LEI, 3 of them particularly involve training around Problem Solving A3's:
- Managing to Learn A3 (2-day)
- Lean Problem Solving (1 day)
- Problem Solving aligning People, Purpose and Process
Please take a look!!
http://youtu.be/VNUpQUFmADk
Until next time,
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Why has the Lean movement largely failed to capture the imagination of the sales team?
Hello everyone, this month's post is being shared from theleanedge.org. where I participate with fellow lean practitioners.
The question on the site is by:
Joel Stanwood: Why has the Lean movement largely failed to capture the imagination of the sales team? Most management teams who testify to having implemented Lean will describe financial impact in terms of shop floor efficiency improvement – direct labor productivity, overtime reduction, inventory velocity, floor space utilization, etc. Paradoxically, in terms of company economics, the most alluring promise of Lean is to boost sales, delivering ever higher variable contribution margins while delighting customers and winning in the marketplace. Yet the language of Lean to unlock the growth engine of the company rarely enters the sales vernacular, and in general, sales professionals are far less likely to have participated in Kaizen. Why has the Lean movement largely failed to capture the imagination of the sales team?
My response:
This is a good question and one that doesn’t facilitate itself for such a linear answer. I think all the responses so far have talked about many different ideas based on all our experiences out there with various industry and gives our readers some good perspectives to build on.
I suppose being part of Toyota in the beginning (1988) when we were setting up the systems at TMMK we realized Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) wasn’t necessarily part of our manufacturing plant (meaning onsite), they were a separate entity as Jeff and others described, but they determined our pull system. We were always told that every car we made was sold and TMS wouldn’t have us build to be building- that would go against the rules right? Many do not see this concept or believe its a feasible way to do business.
Toyota made it very easy for us to understand expectations (standards) and we designed our systems around this “pull” from the customer which we referred to as “takt time”. We got as low as 53 seconds a car at one time due to the pull from TMS orders and worked numerous hours of overtime and saturday’s to keep the customer happy based on that demand and/or the opposite if things slowed down. Our systems were “flexible” so we could adapt to change if the market changed. This happened several times in my time there and we were able to adapt with minimal to any downtime at all, just some good ole PDCA planning and thinking..
We learned we would never be a 24/7 shift producer, we would have only 2 shifts, that had the capability for overtime if necessary and also preventative maintenance (PM) to ensure our equipment could meet expectation with the high demand and lean environment we had. We all knew the “design to sell” value stream and ran “just in time”. You would never see Toyota hire manpower for full capacity production this was why the culture had flexibility embedded first and foremost, and was an essential element of the success of TPS. Time and seconds were important so we learned to value each one.
All of this took understanding the entire value stream from order to customer. Some of you have referenced design-make-sell.
I think to add to that thought Toyota recently has added “service” to this value stream, if you think about it, a service department can greatly impact sales of a product so although they are not part of the actual sales or manufacturing they need to understand the impact of their role in the value stream even after the sale. An important aspect many do not teach or discuss but if you reflect on the past few years you can see how sales could be affected by the lack of understanding in service very easily.
In my experience going to companies outside of the “Toyota” standard (which sits up on a pedestal to many) is eye opening in how removed sales and aspects around leveling and development are not included in their thinking and/or planning. To me it should be one of the first areas to learn since many are measured on “results” their sales, or what some call throughput, but the problem is they forget the process that gets them there and that is dangerous. The ole “process vs results” thing- imagine that.
So what I have seen in the past few years traveling around the US that sales are slowly becoming part of the learning sessions, at least where Im going, or ones that attend conferences I hear more often in class now-, “Im from sales”, I believe a pull has begun and my thinking is this:
If a company has sales as a part of the company, meaning they happen to be internal and are sitting next to accounting and/or the payroll folks then it “should” be easier to see the affects of their decision making, but unfortunately its not. The dangers I witnessed by sales not understanding or going to see the value stream even when its right next to them is they commit a product to a customer, without asking if its feasible, where it fits in the leveling process for manufacturing, lead times, manpower, or cost perspectives. To me this creates a “push” system for an organization, by sales having an entire lack of awareness to the entire value stream then they promise promise promise and when it gets funneled to production, they are like ” we cant do this, why did you tell them we could”, so several things can happen. (there are many that trickle down from this)
1. We prioritize orders by client size, order, or money
2. We push the “not so important” (in their minds) orders in “delay mode”
3. Or we miss the order completely putting at risk the reliability of the company
4. We overnight ship product which can result in very high costs
When these things happen then each day is just a reactive hodge-podge of getting what ever work we can put out and meet as many customers as I can. If no one is tracking the “pain to the organization” in regard to the key performance indicators then it can never get back tracked to sales lack of understanding. This can impact morale, costs, job security, company reliability and throughput.
So I feel its a slow pull, but one none the less, of a company seeing the need for sales to understand the entire value stream from design, make, sell, service and how to have “repeat” and addition sales (growth). Having sales understand this can be a paradigm shift in thinking for organizations on who are attending “learning sessions” whether its from a consultant, at a conference, or self learning from all the great books many here have written.
I believe when companies can get away from push production and embed pull production based on the sales departments improved understanding you will begin to see great things. I’ve began to embed this discussion at a awareness level to begin an understanding of the horizontal – vertical alignment of an organization.
I really appreciate the question, its not an easy one to answer without us all going out to ask deep questions regarding a company’s value stream and capacity, the more that is stressed the more I think we will see a slow change in sales becoming a valuable part of the value stream and the pull being the norm versus the abnormal. I hope this helps, this is my perspective based on my experience with some companies and working with their sales and also my time with Toyota to have a comparison.
Until next time,
@tracey_san
Tracey Richardson
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Check out my latest post on theleanedge.org - Just in Time in Batch areas- where do you begin?
Hey guys, I wanted to share with you my latest post on http://www.theleanedge.org. w/ Michael Balle'. The question is below from Andrew Turner, please see below. You can go to the website to see other Lean author responses or see mine below the question:
Andrew Turner: Where do we start in a Press shop?
“Our company is split in 2 sections, the one a JIT assembly plant, the other a mass production Press Shop. Implementation of Lean in the JIT plant has been relatively simple (not that Lean is ever really simple), however, we are struggling with the implementation in our Press Shop. I know the importance of items like SMED and Heijunka in driving this journey, yet we are battling to get the ball rolling forward. Where do you think we should start the process in the Press Shop?”
My Response:
Hi Andrew, I will answer to my personal experience in regard to this question. I think its a good one, it can bring out many dynamics that fall under that umbrella of thinking “flow vs batch” so I will try to cover several of them within my answer. When I was first exposed to the Toyota Production System (TPS) “thinking” in 1988 at Toyota Motor Manuf. KY (TMMK) I made an assumption that if you weren’t practicing one piece flow then you weren’t effectively practicing TPS. Now to explain that statement I was in a 2-week assimilation class before I ever was exposed to my work area, so we learned how to be “toyota team members” and for us; that was learning discipline and accountability to the methodologies that created our culture. I was hired into the Plastics department where we had Injection Molding processes and other similar “molding” areas. I soon realized that one piece flow wasn’t part of the mix there. We almost felt like we were “breaking the rules”, I quickly learned otherwise. I think a common mistake with Lean today is that if you aren’t practicing or creating flow then you aren’t necessarily Lean. I guess we were never Lean in some areas- ah the horror!!:).
So if you take a few steps back and look at a bigger picture you can see there are many things involved with implementing “flow type” thinking in batch driven areas. So in my experience it started with our Production Control Planning department (PC). As a leader in production I was always given a forecast each month from PC for the next month which helped me drive our production numbers to a very close average based on the last 3 months of pull from the customer. Now some may ask, how can you forecast customer pull so precisely? I say this because its not so linear in other industries, as it is perhaps in automotive, but when you think about it- can I really predict exactly what car the customer will purchase on the lot down to one for one? Unfortunately we can’t, nor can healthcare leaders know what is always coming through the door so you do the best you can to minimize waste and understand and track pull.
So if we use the previous 3 months of data to drive our future need we would try to predict within a 10-15% window, meaning sometimes there was flucuation in customer demand based on options/colors etc, and we tried to deal with that with our daily “leveling” (heijunka) if necessary. Just because our takt time (pull dictated by the customer) may have been 60 sec a part “off the end of the line” didn’t mean every car had to be 60 sec. We had to average 60 seconds at the end. So for example, a high end Camry may take 67 seconds to complete a specific process and a base model may only take 53 seconds, so Im averaging 60 seconds which is part of our production planning to try and forecast this to the best of their ability at level daily which met the montly expectations as close as we could (remember 10-15%).
So if Im given a production sheet for example stating we are making X amount of Camry’s and X amount of Avalons and X amount of Venza’s then I look at those high level breakdown points as my first level of “kanban” creation. A kanban is like an instruction for production or inventory regulation whether you are running one piece flow or batch type. The next level breakdown may look at specific exterior colors or interior colors, then even type of car for example sunroof or not, leather versus clothe.
So to countermeasure our batch areas to be the most efficient the Japanese trainers introduced us to a concept called signal kanban. This allowed us to run just in time with Assembly even though we had 3-4 mold changes per day (sometimes up to 45 min downtime per shift). Of course we looked at SMED too and got our changes down from 30 min to 10 min, but to know how many you were running and when to do the mold changes was mimicking just in time in many ways in an area where you couldn’t do one for one.
So based on the monthly forecast I was responsible for determining how many kanban (we had 20 headliners per a kanban)- in our case the kanban was an empty cart brought back from assembly. I knew how many assembly were going to pull based on the PC forecast, so when they emptied a cart the kanbans were posted on a board signaling us when it was time for a mold change and this same method went into our next shift, so they ran different molds than we did minimizing the changes per shift. The shift leaders worked together and rotated molds often monthly or quarterly based on the pull and to minimize waste. If you can envision a board with hooks by type, color and model we hung our kanban cards showing how many were pulled and then needed to be built by the next shift, it worked beautifully and yet we were still running “batch” but the most efficient way, maximizing every second of time to create as much value as possible. This was similar in our Stamping department as well. The signal kanban was necessary to compete in an Assembly driven one for one off line process, otherwise you would need lots of space to stack parts up if we were just mass producing.
Note** Within our assembly processes for the headliner pieces it was one for one applying hardware for the lighting and sunroof. So we embedded work cells within our mold changing areas that were driven by a one piece flow but at a higher level pulled from a signal kanban mold change system, we implemented the best of both worlds.
The key point is ensuring that your people understand the purpose/importance to stick to the kanban set by production control as much as possible, often times there can be situations where you would have an urge to “stock-pile” parts or “add” extra kanban to boost your inventory for those dreaded downtime days. It’s an absolute discipline when you really run a “batch” flow when you stick to your guns and run to what the kanban orders (in essence the customer) not to an inventory level that doesnt relate to a pull type system.
You also must create standardized work that meets the expectation per process that meets the assembly pull that creates your signal kanban, there was minimal ability for buffer creation if you followed the rules. In our case had about 3 hours of buffer between us an assembly, that kept us just in time and following the rules. It also enabled us to be in a continuous improvement “problem solving” mode- we encouraged a problem awareness type culture(problems were good). We used the Define-Achieve-Maintain-Improve model (DAMI) to ensure if we met a standard we raised the bar and improved it, again this thinking ensured we were respecting our team members ability to think and continuing to raise the bar on our processes allowing us to see waste. Waste can lead to excess inventory if not addressed and that isn’t a friend and shouldn’t be welcomed so we must create that discipline with our people in understanding expectation and teach them to see abnormality to standard at all times. My role as a leader was to live that and develop others in that thinking.
It’s hard to tell you exactly “where” to start without seeing more, but I can share with you my experiences in how I learned based on what my trainers taught me in a “mold changing batch area”. I think the key where ever you decide to begin based on all the replies you will receive is ensure you are utilizing the power of your people, ensuring standards are set so people can see abnormality and ask why, then lastly have a production planning process that forecasts very closely to customer demand and set up your systems with the flexibility to change monthly, bi-monthly, or even quarterly depending upon your product(s) demand. I think our flexibility was the “cake” and knowing the expectation within a tight window (10-15% for example) was the icing. I hope this helped answer your question.
Until next time,
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Andrew Turner: Where do we start in a Press shop?
“Our company is split in 2 sections, the one a JIT assembly plant, the other a mass production Press Shop. Implementation of Lean in the JIT plant has been relatively simple (not that Lean is ever really simple), however, we are struggling with the implementation in our Press Shop. I know the importance of items like SMED and Heijunka in driving this journey, yet we are battling to get the ball rolling forward. Where do you think we should start the process in the Press Shop?”
My Response:
Hi Andrew, I will answer to my personal experience in regard to this question. I think its a good one, it can bring out many dynamics that fall under that umbrella of thinking “flow vs batch” so I will try to cover several of them within my answer. When I was first exposed to the Toyota Production System (TPS) “thinking” in 1988 at Toyota Motor Manuf. KY (TMMK) I made an assumption that if you weren’t practicing one piece flow then you weren’t effectively practicing TPS. Now to explain that statement I was in a 2-week assimilation class before I ever was exposed to my work area, so we learned how to be “toyota team members” and for us; that was learning discipline and accountability to the methodologies that created our culture. I was hired into the Plastics department where we had Injection Molding processes and other similar “molding” areas. I soon realized that one piece flow wasn’t part of the mix there. We almost felt like we were “breaking the rules”, I quickly learned otherwise. I think a common mistake with Lean today is that if you aren’t practicing or creating flow then you aren’t necessarily Lean. I guess we were never Lean in some areas- ah the horror!!:).
So if you take a few steps back and look at a bigger picture you can see there are many things involved with implementing “flow type” thinking in batch driven areas. So in my experience it started with our Production Control Planning department (PC). As a leader in production I was always given a forecast each month from PC for the next month which helped me drive our production numbers to a very close average based on the last 3 months of pull from the customer. Now some may ask, how can you forecast customer pull so precisely? I say this because its not so linear in other industries, as it is perhaps in automotive, but when you think about it- can I really predict exactly what car the customer will purchase on the lot down to one for one? Unfortunately we can’t, nor can healthcare leaders know what is always coming through the door so you do the best you can to minimize waste and understand and track pull.
So if we use the previous 3 months of data to drive our future need we would try to predict within a 10-15% window, meaning sometimes there was flucuation in customer demand based on options/colors etc, and we tried to deal with that with our daily “leveling” (heijunka) if necessary. Just because our takt time (pull dictated by the customer) may have been 60 sec a part “off the end of the line” didn’t mean every car had to be 60 sec. We had to average 60 seconds at the end. So for example, a high end Camry may take 67 seconds to complete a specific process and a base model may only take 53 seconds, so Im averaging 60 seconds which is part of our production planning to try and forecast this to the best of their ability at level daily which met the montly expectations as close as we could (remember 10-15%).
So if Im given a production sheet for example stating we are making X amount of Camry’s and X amount of Avalons and X amount of Venza’s then I look at those high level breakdown points as my first level of “kanban” creation. A kanban is like an instruction for production or inventory regulation whether you are running one piece flow or batch type. The next level breakdown may look at specific exterior colors or interior colors, then even type of car for example sunroof or not, leather versus clothe.
So to countermeasure our batch areas to be the most efficient the Japanese trainers introduced us to a concept called signal kanban. This allowed us to run just in time with Assembly even though we had 3-4 mold changes per day (sometimes up to 45 min downtime per shift). Of course we looked at SMED too and got our changes down from 30 min to 10 min, but to know how many you were running and when to do the mold changes was mimicking just in time in many ways in an area where you couldn’t do one for one.
So based on the monthly forecast I was responsible for determining how many kanban (we had 20 headliners per a kanban)- in our case the kanban was an empty cart brought back from assembly. I knew how many assembly were going to pull based on the PC forecast, so when they emptied a cart the kanbans were posted on a board signaling us when it was time for a mold change and this same method went into our next shift, so they ran different molds than we did minimizing the changes per shift. The shift leaders worked together and rotated molds often monthly or quarterly based on the pull and to minimize waste. If you can envision a board with hooks by type, color and model we hung our kanban cards showing how many were pulled and then needed to be built by the next shift, it worked beautifully and yet we were still running “batch” but the most efficient way, maximizing every second of time to create as much value as possible. This was similar in our Stamping department as well. The signal kanban was necessary to compete in an Assembly driven one for one off line process, otherwise you would need lots of space to stack parts up if we were just mass producing.
Note** Within our assembly processes for the headliner pieces it was one for one applying hardware for the lighting and sunroof. So we embedded work cells within our mold changing areas that were driven by a one piece flow but at a higher level pulled from a signal kanban mold change system, we implemented the best of both worlds.
The key point is ensuring that your people understand the purpose/importance to stick to the kanban set by production control as much as possible, often times there can be situations where you would have an urge to “stock-pile” parts or “add” extra kanban to boost your inventory for those dreaded downtime days. It’s an absolute discipline when you really run a “batch” flow when you stick to your guns and run to what the kanban orders (in essence the customer) not to an inventory level that doesnt relate to a pull type system.
You also must create standardized work that meets the expectation per process that meets the assembly pull that creates your signal kanban, there was minimal ability for buffer creation if you followed the rules. In our case had about 3 hours of buffer between us an assembly, that kept us just in time and following the rules. It also enabled us to be in a continuous improvement “problem solving” mode- we encouraged a problem awareness type culture(problems were good). We used the Define-Achieve-Maintain-Improve model (DAMI) to ensure if we met a standard we raised the bar and improved it, again this thinking ensured we were respecting our team members ability to think and continuing to raise the bar on our processes allowing us to see waste. Waste can lead to excess inventory if not addressed and that isn’t a friend and shouldn’t be welcomed so we must create that discipline with our people in understanding expectation and teach them to see abnormality to standard at all times. My role as a leader was to live that and develop others in that thinking.
It’s hard to tell you exactly “where” to start without seeing more, but I can share with you my experiences in how I learned based on what my trainers taught me in a “mold changing batch area”. I think the key where ever you decide to begin based on all the replies you will receive is ensure you are utilizing the power of your people, ensuring standards are set so people can see abnormality and ask why, then lastly have a production planning process that forecasts very closely to customer demand and set up your systems with the flexibility to change monthly, bi-monthly, or even quarterly depending upon your product(s) demand. I think our flexibility was the “cake” and knowing the expectation within a tight window (10-15% for example) was the icing. I hope this helped answer your question.
Until next time,
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Can we reduce nemawashi to lobbying ? Is nemawashi checking the relevance of a solution and enriching it with key field actors, or simply promoting / enforcing it ?
Hello everyone,
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, it has been a busy one for me traveling all around the US and Canada spreading the good word about changing how people think and practice as an organization.
My next blog post is being shared yet again from theleanedge.org where I have been participating in the dialogue answering specific questions posted by individuals and/or companies on their lean journey.
This month's question is:
Can we reduce nemawashi to lobbying ? Is nemawashi checking the relevance of a solution and enriching it with key field actors, or simply promoting / enforcing it ?
I think this is a great question and something we tend to overlook in the communication process of (engaging people). Many have never heard of the word Nemawashi so please check out my answer to the question along with other Lean authors.
Here is the link to the site - http://theleanedge.org/
If you want a link to my specific response be go here - http://theleanedge.org/?p=3845
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, it has been a busy one for me traveling all around the US and Canada spreading the good word about changing how people think and practice as an organization.
My next blog post is being shared yet again from theleanedge.org where I have been participating in the dialogue answering specific questions posted by individuals and/or companies on their lean journey.
This month's question is:
Can we reduce nemawashi to lobbying ? Is nemawashi checking the relevance of a solution and enriching it with key field actors, or simply promoting / enforcing it ?
I think this is a great question and something we tend to overlook in the communication process of (engaging people). Many have never heard of the word Nemawashi so please check out my answer to the question along with other Lean authors.
Here is the link to the site - http://theleanedge.org/
If you want a link to my specific response be go here - http://theleanedge.org/?p=3845
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Saturday, July 14, 2012
How do we ensure a constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation after these years and what are the pitfalls we must avoid ?
Hello everyone!
This post comes to you from theleanedge.org again. TheLeanEdge.org is an online gathering place for lean authors, practitioners, and business leaders come together to discuss best practices.
I'm active in many blogs and websites regarding Lean and the concepts around it so I want to ensure I share the great information being share from those sites.
This week's question is from Klaus Peterson:
We have been on the Lean journey for 5 years where we have been focusing on training people in visualizing, analyzing and solving problems. We have spend a lot of efforts in training managers to support the journey which they have done. How do we ensure a constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation after these years and what are the pitfalls we must avoid ?
I'm sure many of you have had a similar thought if you are on the journey. Continue to visit the site as people chime in with their thoughts.
http://theleanedge.org/
My reply is here - http://theleanedge.org/?p=3777
Enjoy!
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
This post comes to you from theleanedge.org again. TheLeanEdge.org is an online gathering place for lean authors, practitioners, and business leaders come together to discuss best practices.
I'm active in many blogs and websites regarding Lean and the concepts around it so I want to ensure I share the great information being share from those sites.
This week's question is from Klaus Peterson:
We have been on the Lean journey for 5 years where we have been focusing on training people in visualizing, analyzing and solving problems. We have spend a lot of efforts in training managers to support the journey which they have done. How do we ensure a constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation after these years and what are the pitfalls we must avoid ?
I'm sure many of you have had a similar thought if you are on the journey. Continue to visit the site as people chime in with their thoughts.
http://theleanedge.org/
My reply is here - http://theleanedge.org/?p=3777
Enjoy!
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Why do we have to call it something?
Hello everyone,
This weeks blog I will take you to the Lean Enterprise Institute's A3 Dojo at http://www.lean.org/a3dojo
The column is about "Don't Call it Anything". I believe that using labels to describe what I consider to be actions can be hindering for the drive for improvement. I'm not saying Lean is a bad word, its just often misused or misunderstood by many and it's becomes an add-on to someone's job versus their actual job and daily responsibilities.
Check out the column and visit me at the Dojo where I am a sensei. Would love for you or others to share their thoughts about A3 thinking, coaching, problem solving or anything around those subjects you would like to learn more about.
Go here!
http://www.lean.org/a3dojo/ColumnArchive.cfm?y=2012#Col2104
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
This weeks blog I will take you to the Lean Enterprise Institute's A3 Dojo at http://www.lean.org/a3dojo
The column is about "Don't Call it Anything". I believe that using labels to describe what I consider to be actions can be hindering for the drive for improvement. I'm not saying Lean is a bad word, its just often misused or misunderstood by many and it's becomes an add-on to someone's job versus their actual job and daily responsibilities.
Check out the column and visit me at the Dojo where I am a sensei. Would love for you or others to share their thoughts about A3 thinking, coaching, problem solving or anything around those subjects you would like to learn more about.
Go here!
http://www.lean.org/a3dojo/ColumnArchive.cfm?y=2012#Col2104
Until next time
Tracey Richardson
@tracey_san
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