In the KaiZone Friday Favorites, I present my top ten favorite articles from the last week (give or take a few days) in the world of Lean – and beyond. With leading content from the world’s foremost improvement authors and future Lean leaders, I do the research so you don’t have to!
10. 3 Components of an Effective Kaizen Management System by Mark Graban. “Does “Kaizen,” or “good change” happen naturally in an organization? In my experience, it can happen naturally, since nearly everybody has ideas about how to improve their workplace, and a desire to make those improvements happen. But does Kaizen naturally happen, in practice? Not usually. That’s why a Kaizen Management System is critically important.”
9. The Difference a Visual Cue Makes by Tracey Richardson. “While we work hard to make our own work processes visual, devising ways to see abnormalities and solve problems, it’s interesting to note that the world revolves around visuals, andons, and cues placing us in a constant state of awareness. Good design is all about making us aware of the abnormality to the standard. That’s just good design and it’s also lean.”
8. What Is Respect for People? by Chad Walters. “Respect for people comes into play through trust and communication with partners up and down the supply/service chain in order to define and create that customer value. It’s not just about “being nice” or philanthropy. It actually has hard and fast applications to optimizing operations.”
7. A Guide to Lean Leadership by Tim McMahon. “The best leaders don’t put people in a box – they free them from boxes. Ultimately, a leaders job isn’t to create followers, but to strive for ubiquitous leadership. Average leaders spend time scaling processes, systems, and models – great leaders focus on scaling leadership.”
6. Sustaining Lean by Bob Emiliani. “We always have to worry about flavor-of-the-month hungry executives, fixated on the short-term and addicted to shortcuts. Consultants will take advantage of these enduring weaknesses to sell executives the next new thing… The marketplace will always produce customers who want inferior, low-fidelity versions of Lean management. And the marketplace will always produce consultants who will gladly respond to that customer’s pull and seek to satisfy their demand.”
5. Long-term Organizational Health or Sugar High? by Robert Miler. “Enlightened lean practitioners have come to understand that sustainability of a lean journey is only possible when it becomes part of the organizational culture. Otherwise, improvement efforts seem to consistently result in a series of “sugar highs” – temporary boosts in results accompanied by a fleeting feeling of victory. We know “flavor-of-the-month” initiatives can’t be the focus of a lean leader. So, where should their focus be?”
4. Finding Time for Improvement by Dan Jones. ”I am always struck visiting corporate headquarters how many bright propel are wasting their time using PowerPoint to fight functional turf wars. A clear alignment on the vital few, direct observation of progress at the front line and lean project management is the way to release time for improvement and steal a march on your competitors.”
3. How Do We Prevent Backsliding? by Art Byrne. “Above all remember that you should never do a kaizen and just walk away. Once you’ve made and sustained gains, schedule the next kaizen for that area to get to the next level of gains. Secure the gains you’ve acheived, share that learning, and then do it all again. After all, the word “kaizen” means continuous improvement. You can’t achieve that without going back again and again to remove the waste from your processes and actively, creatively problem solve.”
2. Freddy Ballé’s Four Points by Richard Kaminski. “Kaizen events help ‘clean the window’ ( and generate immediate savings ) but have meaning only to the extent that eliminating variations reveals quality and process control issues. Quality is much more difficult to achieve than efficiency because it quickly boils down to knowledge — and the need to develop deep skills, which is also one of the true keys to success in Lean.”
And this week’s Friday Favorite goes to . . .
1. Value Stream Mapping: Ferrari or Pinto by Karen Martin. “The first question I ask when being brought in to lead value stream improvement is: What problem are you trying to solve? This question is closely followed by: How do you know you have a problem? Without metrics, both questions are nearly impossible to answer. And if you can’t answer those questions, you should probably move on to another problem. After all, in most organizations, there’s no shortage of problems to be solved!”
Have an article that you’d like to share with The KaiZone community? Post it in the comments section below. Have a great weekend, friends!
I fixed the link to #5. Thanks for the heads-up!