Two years and back?

It may be time to update or even change the direction, but with Bonnie blogging I decided to revisit my blog – hello blog!

re-inspired

At a workshop today, blogging one of many topics. To learn I must blog…and I must continue to learn.

The Continuous Improvement journey is now at less than half-speed. Focus on implementing a new ERP system has taken priority. But with a new hire and more energy dedicated to this effort, we have hopes for a resurgence.

Generating continuous effort toward continuous improvement is a difficult task. Without this, our results will fall short of the potential.

…signs of success

It is a great sign when the management team is away from the facility and the leadership team remaining pulls together and accomplishes record velocity of output in one day. Continuous Improvement does work. Soon we will experience a four-day “Rapid Improvement Event” which will mark the first major Lean/Kaizen event since the total team graduated from Continuous Improvement 101. Interesting times…

…team communications

What really does “continuous improvement” or “lean manufacturing” mean to a group of multi-cultural workers in a manufacturing plant? Often it doesn’t mean much and is difficult to translate across cultures and languages. In some cultures “lean” is associated with something death-like; not the connotation you would like for a transformational manufacturing philosophy and approach.

Today we began the formal communications process of the official Continuous Improvement Program and our goal will be to talk, train, communicate, and then talk, train and communicate more until every person in the company, when asked, will have a solid foundational understanding. Goal: everyone can recite that Continuous Improvement is about creating a culture of respect for the individual and creating a culture where continually improving every thing we do is a simple reality of business life.

…standard work

Sounds a bit boring, but it is an absoultely critical foundation to carefully develop, implement and insure standard work processes are followed a “continuous improvement” manufacturing setting. This seems so basic as to hardly deserve much press, but in reality it is extremely difficult to achieve. Workers tend to ‘do their own thing’ and create personalized work processes with a wide range of effectiveness and real outcomes.

 Often just the act of establishing and following standard work processes can have dramatic results. But it takes discipline to achieve this across a workforce, and even more discipline to monitor and insure standard processes are being followed over time.

…return to the real world

A week of holiday in Maui is over today, so time to refocus back into the world of manufacturing and Continuous Improvement. While I have been away it has been fun to check in with the team daily by reviewing a few key metrics that show up in my e-mail box each morning. This is a great reminder of the importance of a few key measurements or metrics and also how it is critical to boil these down to the important few. I also like graphs as they can tell a quick, visual story in a matter of seconds. Ideally, if all the key metrics can be reported on one page daily, this is perfect. And if critical value stream metrics can be recapped weekly the combination of these two will give the management team the information they need to act fast and respond to the business quickly.

Now let’s see if I can get into a daily blogging habit!

another milestone reached…

Last week another major milestone was reached in the team’s quest for Zero Defects. Six months ago it was not uncommon for the final quality check to discover 20% to 30% of the products needed some amount of “rework” prior to shipment. These orders would then flow back upstream for various amounts of fixing prior to yet another round through the QC department. At the time, we began tracking and focusing more on quality, on getting it right the first time, on First Time Through Perfect, and even re-crafted the bonus system to reward quality rather than quantity.

Last Friday the QC department registered ONE quality defect for the day…amazing progress in a relatively short time. How did they do it? I believe a number of key factors helped with this turnaround: 1) moving a QC person into the process midway, 2) helping teams find root cause problems rather than fixing (enabling) issues during the process, 3) training and making people aware that quality comes first and that speed and quality can go hand in hand (but never at the expense of quality). 

This is a beginning, and the teams have accomplished something they did not believe was possible. What fun!!

a breakthrough week…

I’ve decided to focus this blog on the work of a leadership team in manufacturing creating a significant transformation to a culture and operation of “continuous improvement.” My hope is the blog will provide an addition level of conversation for all of those involved, and provide another way to discuss, learn, share and talk about all that we are doing.

First and foremost, at every chance we need to talk about the two foundational pieces of a culture of “continuous improvement”: 1) respect for individuals, and 2) relentlessing working to continuously improve everything we do. It seems simple but rarely is this done well. We have both the people and the opportunity to do this well.

Last week was a breakthrough week; only possible because of the work of the leadership team over many weeks. There were many “continuous improvement” changes implemented by the work teams (modification trainees assigned to mentors, standard work processes established/reinforced in cast correction, a “floater” assigned in bottom treatment/final assembly to improve single piece flow, a QC person moved to the lab at plastic smoothing). All small changes, but in combination they helped provide significant results: 11 issues logged by QC on Thursday and only 8 logged on Friday. Amazing results all during days of high throughput.

Much to discuss but I will add more in future posts…

inspired by continuous improvement…

Inspired by my friend Gerald Baron, a serial blogger, I decided to venture into the water myself. Where will this lead? Who knows, but possibly a place to talk and discuss all things “continuous improvement” and discuss my work in this field. And have some fun. Let the party begin….