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Groupthink is the condition in which individuals set aside their beliefs and concerns to conform to group opinion. This is most commonly done because people value the cohesion of the group more than the risk of a poor outcome. While the term was first coined by William H. Whyte in Read more…
The process of giving instructions often leaves a significant amount of room for misinterpretation. People are often distracted during the briefing, or skim the email containing instructions. Or, the recipient may just make some different assumptions than the person delivering the instructions. Regardless, as in the childhood game of “telephone”, Read more…
Noise in Lean operations has a rather significant impact. High levels of noise can cause permanent hearing loss. There are basically two things you can do to avoid the loss of that vital sense: eliminate the noise or wear appropriate hearing protection. There are also other impacts of noise. People Read more…
Spend any time around Lean, or any other continuous improvement methodology, for that matter, and you will undoubtedly hear the term “Respect for People.” It is a simple concept that should act as a moral compass in how people do business. The fact is that a company does not have Read more…
Micromanagement is the act of giving overly excessive instructions to employees. It tends to reduce the effectiveness of an organization for a variety of reasons. If a manager is micromanaging an employee, he is not doing his own work, limiting his effectiveness. If a manager micromanages, her employees will be Read more…
Policy Deployment is the (usually) annual process of reviewing the strategic goals of an organization and aligning the company’s resources towards meeting those goals. Hoshin Kanri is the Japanese term that means roughly the same. The literal translation, like many foreign words, is open to interpretation, but many versions seem Read more…
Kitting is a method used to standardize production processes. Sets of parts are consolidated and delivered to a work area as a unit. The kit contains the precise number of parts or amount of material to produce a set number of products. The benefit is that there is less real Read more…
NPD is perhaps the most critical of all business functions. Think of a business like a shark. It has to keep moving forward to stay alive. NPD is the process by which they keep moving forward. Customers get bored with the current product or need a fresh product to solve Read more…
QCD is the acronym for the broad categorization of metrics and KPIs in continuous improvement. The acronym QCD stands for: Quality: In most cases, this view of quality is “conformance to specification”, rather than grade. Cost: Cost, obviously, has a prominent role due to its close tie to profitability. Delivery: Read more…
An unlinked production environment is like an accordion. Some processes move faster than the average and some operate more slowly. As a result, parts move through the system at varying speeds, only to end up in piles of inventory scattered along the value stream. Even with a takt time in Read more…
Stakeholders are the people that are vested in the outcome of something. They are not necessarily people who actually do the process, but they do have some skin in the game. Stakeholders that are indirectly affected by a process frequently have a negative effect from the change. In many cases, Read more…
People crave appreciation for their performance. They put a significant amount of effort into their jobs, and most people closely associate their personal value with how they feel they are perceived at work. There are many ways leaders show that they appreciate their team. In some cases, they display their Read more…