Boredom, not surprisingly, is simply tedium or a lack of excitement in your job. Boredom (or lack thereof) plays a big role in job satisfaction. Nobody wants to go to work and face eight or ten dull, monotonous hours every day. What a lot of people fail to recognize is that there is significant waste associated with boredom at work. Bored employees may get the job done, but they are not as effective and productive Read more…
Backsliding it the act of reverting to a pre-improvement process. If you were to plot improvement over time on a run chart, backsliding would give the curve a saw-tooth look to it. A gain followed by a drop, followed by a gain and another drop. Backsliding is reduced by standardization (i.e. by using Standard Work). It can also be completely prevented by removing tools necessary to do a process the old way. This step accelerates Read more…
Henry Ford is generally considered to be the inventor of the assembly line. In reality, he should be credited with the transition of the assembly line into the modern version of it. Primitive versions had been around in England for about a century. Henry Ford’s primary improvement was focusing the whole operation on supporting the assembly line. So, what is an assembly line? It is a series of operations, linked in physical space. Product flows Read more…
Should Standard Work Documents Be Hand-Written or Computer Generated? There are two conflicting schools of thought on establishing your standard work procedures. Those in favor of computer-generated standard work documents such as Standard Work Sheets and Standard Work Combination Sheets point to the ease with which the information can be updated, and the ability to rapidly transmit the form to the other side of the world.(Click on the links above to download blank standard work forms and learn Read more…
Simplicity is, simply put, the lack of complexity. In the modern world, complexity is looked upon as a sign of advancement and prowess. Simplicity is viewed as the earmark of an amateur. Fortunately for Lean companies, this is not true. It is much harder to accomplish something with simplicity than with complicated overkill. Why is this fortunate? Because complexity costs money, both initially, for maintenance, and in the confusion it creates. The more companies that Read more…
Observation is an important skill for Lean and other methods of continuous improvement. It is necessary to document the “before” process, identify waste, to conduct audits, and to confirm the effectiveness of changes. Observation is simply the practice of watching a process, preferably several times, to learn about it. Observation gives you a greater understanding of what is going on than you could get by hearing or reading about a process. Quite often the description Read more…
Guidelines are general instructions on how to make decisions. Unlike specific policies and processes, guidelines are not rigid. Guidelines are loose blueprints for success, such as “Don’t swim for 30 minutes after eating”. Contrasting with policies and rules, there are generally no sanctions for disregarding guidelines. While there is a time and place for guidelines, most Lean operations require more structure than guidelines provide. For example, using a kanban system effectively requires religiously following the Read more…
Frustration is the feeling of anxiety or dissatisfaction that results from the gap between expectations and reality. Frustration happens when problems are unsolved and when things don’t go according to plan. Lean depends heavily on employee engagement and job satisfaction to work at its best. Frustration reduces job satisfaction, thereby lowering the effectiveness of Lean efforts. The opposite is also true. Rapidly dealing with frustration engages employees. They get more committed to making improvements, which Read more…
Does experience matter anymore? Despite the fact that people talk about experience with a degree of reverence, it has a changing role in continuous improvement. Experience is defined as having knowledge or practical wisdom from having done something. The more it was done, the more experience a person gained. Be careful not to let experience matter too much in decisions about people. Use it as an indicator, but judge people on demonstrated ability. That is Read more…
Effectiveness is like the transmission of a car. It turns potential into results. Of course, there are two implications here. The first is that an individual has skills or characteristics that can lead to the desired outcome, or that a machine or process has the right capability and enough capacity. Just having the skills is not enough, though. A college degree doesn’t make a person effective at a job. It just tends to raise the Read more…
Analysis is the deep dive into the details of a problem in order to better understand it. Analysis is a central part of most problem solving methods. In fact, the ‘A’ in DMAIC (from Six Sigma) is Analyze. In the analysis step, one doesn’t necessarily look for solutions, just a deeper knowledge about why things are as they are. A common problem that improvement teams encounter comes from skipping the analysis step. They think they Read more…
An inspection is a review to confirm the quality of a product. Inspections vary widely in their formality, and in the location where they are done. The closer an inspection is to the point where an error is made, the quicker the problem can be corrected. Inspections may cover 100% of a product when extremely high quality is required (normally for a high-risk product or service), or when processes are not well-developed. Sampling is a Read more…