There is a way people think known as an “availability heuristic.” That is a fancy way of saying that we judge what we think is going to happen by the easiest to remember examples. We’ve all heard about efforts to cut costs in other companies (or possibly even our own), Read more…
Everyone wants to be seen as being good at their jobs. When a company makes a change from an old way of doing business to a Lean way, the rules change. Team members can feel like the carpet was pulled out from under them. To regain a sense of security, they need to understand how they will be evaluated in their new continuous improvement oriented company.
Some people struggle in the early days of a Lean journey. This is especially true when there are big changes in the way the workplace operates. One of the biggest transitions is in the structure that comes with Lean. Those people that don’t embrace all the improvement opportunities that a Read more…
Balancing relationships and the requirements of your job can feel like you are walking a tightrope. One of the most challenging balancing acts comes when you have a coworker who is constantly passing on the same problem to you over and over. You don’t want to feel like you are Read more…
One of the jobs of a leader in a Lean environment is to push teams to embrace a continuous improvement culture. The often entails asking the team to try to implement one of the Lean tools in a work area. On occasion, the tool they the boss recommends is not Read more…
Every continuous improvement project should start with data collection. Unfortunately, when that data is collected with a notion of how the results should look, not surprisingly, the results often come out as they are expected to. It is easy to introduce bias into a data collection effort, if you are Read more…
Production glitches and line stops are a fact of life. The better your team gets, the less frequent and shorter they stoppages are, but they will always occur. Even great teams are constantly working to make processes better. Sometimes, this is done by removing safety nets to see where the Read more…
Continuous improvement is built around the PDCA, or plan-do-check-act cycle. Unfortunately for many people, they are not used to the “check” step. As a result, they often feel micromanaged and untrusted when the boss comes into the area to see how things are progressing.
The total workload for a team is directly related to the demand, and demand tends to change over time. On occasion, the demand rises faster than planned, and suddenly a team feels shorthanded. For a variety of reasons, there can be a delay in getting more people on the staff Read more…
You spend an incredibly large percentage of your day at work. On top of that, the general tone of the day carries over to your personal life. When the day is full of complaints, whether yours or other people’s, the day takes a lot out of you. Fortunately, there are Read more…
There is a fine line between wanting new equipment and needing new equipment. One of the best examples is computers. Every 15 minutes or so, a breakthrough in computing power happens, and the equipment you are using becomes obsolete. But upgrading with each new release is too expensive. The flip Read more…
Many people first learn about Lean when their boss tells them the company will be changing the way it does business. The information they receive tends to focus on what Lean is, and how it works. But often, they can’t quite make out what it will mean to their job, Read more…