How to Know if you are doing Good Lean

How to Know if you are doing Good Lean?

You have been practicing lean for quite some time now but, you aren’t sure if you are doing good lean. If this is the case, then you are not alone. There are many others like you who have the same questions wandering in their mind, and you have come to the right place to find an answer to this question.

The most important thing that matters is if you have got a sensei or not. Just like with any learning, along with regular practice, having a master is important, so is with lean. Your relationship with your master is a very important element in the process of learning. He will be able to guide you on every step in the process. If you don’t have one yet, you should try to have one as soon as possible. However, until you find one, you will be worried about whether you are doing good lean or not. Here is what you need to know.

Your intent

First, ask yourself what your intent is. What lean program are you intending to follow? How hard are you willing to work? These are the questions you need to ask yourself to analyze your intent for working towards lean. Ask yourself the following few questions to know how hard you are trying.

• Have you been to the gemba?
• Have you found a customer satisfaction issue and defended your customer?
• Have you found a safety issue and defended problem solving to protect your employees?
• Have you found a rework case and discussed the problem with the employees to understand what the problem was and how they managed to solved it?
• Have you found batch thinking and tried to provide flexibility and more variety to the customers, and worked towards one product/service at a time?
• Have you encouraged your team to analyze their performance and work method, and come up with better ways to perform their tasks?
• Have you learnt how you can make further lean improvements in your organization?

You must understand that the most important aspect of lean is that apart from you yourself working towards improving your organization, you need to instill the same feelings within your team members so that they can understand the problem and come up with their own solutions.

Are there visible improvements?

The aim of lean is to improve your performance as well as having others to improve the same too. If you are able to see results with random changes and you assume that what you have done is right, then it does not hold true with lean. In lean, the visible performance should be linked to team members better understanding their working situations and being able to express the change they have seen with what they did before and how they handle  things now. So, knowing that you have done ‘good’ lean is when the team members are able to figure out something fundamental about their working situation and have been able to deliver visible performance improvements.

Try to understand better

It is very easy to master individual tools in lean but, mastering the entire system of lean requires daily practice for years together. When asked at Toyota’s Taipei plant how long it takes to develop a TPS sensei, they answered 30 years! You would wonder why it would take so long for someone to master a practice. There is a reason to this. The lean system has grown over 60 years in different situations and mastering this system is a life-long pursuit.

 

So, in order to know if you are doing good lean, you must first know how serious your intent is, then check for any visible performance improvements that can be linked with the team members who have learnt to perform better, and lastly see if your gemba experiences have changed your own understanding of lean thinking. If you want to have a better understanding of lean, you must keep attending lean workshops and  Lean summit India, where the most enlightened speakers from diverse industry segments and the best known lean sensei in the world come together to teach lean.

Lean Convincing

How can you Impress Managers who don’t believe in Lean?

You might want to apply lean to your organization but, your managers don’t believe in lean methodologies and thus, you get no support. So, you start to try convincing them that lean is beneficial. But, ‘Boss is always right’ and if they say ‘No’ to lean then it should be accepted as a strict ‘No’. So, instead of wasting time to make fruitless efforts, invest your time in practicing lean yourself and see how your managers will support you in a short period of time.

Try placing lean in your processes. Observe and discuss the problems you find. Analyze your goals by asking yourself how you can improve the quality of your products/services, how you can add more products/services to please your customers, how you can reduce your lead time and how you can improve productivity with reduced costs. This way you can improve your own activities.

Also analyze things like how far you are from your takt time, the continuity of your job from start to finish, the possibility of continuing with other tasks simultaneously without having to finish one before moving to the next and how far you are able to satisfy customers’ demands.

In short, observe your own department carefully and apply lean practices so that you can change the way you see things. This will let you know how to increase value and eliminate waste thus, having you to be better organized. This will impress your managers and have them expanding your area of responsibility. This way you will convince them indirectly for lean and move up the corporate ladder faster.

To be able to bring such lean transformation in India, you need to be trained well by lean professionals. For getting information about the best lean training in India, you can visit http://www.leaninstitute.in/

 

How To Be Lean?

Every organization keeps updating their methods and plans to meet their objectives in a better way. In order to achieve efficiency, it is important that lean practices are followed in the organization by every team member every day. It is good enough if the teams are taught and guided about performing lean practices in the initial stages but, once they are aware of the process, it is important that they follow these practices themselves rather than being forced to do so. For this, the team needs to self-realize the benefits of being lean based on their own self learning rather than through preaching.

First of all, the confidence level of every team member should be boosted and they must strive towards following lean practices every day. They should even keep track of where they are in the lean journey and what their target destination is. This is the role of the leaders of an organization to make the team realize what their expectations and end goals are, and then make a plan to achieve them. The team must be able to identify the best ways to eliminate waste from their processes, and instead of being lame workers who blindly follow the plans, they should be able to choose the best way towards efficiency. Also, the problems that are faced by the organization should be visible by all so that every individual can give their inputs for solving them. It is crucial to have the involvement of every team member in problem solving.

If you are interested in learning about different lean approaches, you must not miss the opportunity of attending the Lean Summit India that is to be taken place on 9th and 10th Dec 2015, where the most enlightened speakers from diverse industry segments and the best known lean sensei in the world will come together to teach lean.

How Do HRs Play An Important Role In Lean Transformation

Lean thinking and lean processes require every team member’s association with the organization. But, it is seen that the role of the HR organization is often neglected. The change needed in the HR practices of a company for a lean transformation is never considered. Inconsistency between lean thinking and HR management is a big mistake made by organizations. All the HR activities including employee selection, allowance, bonus, promotions and detention need to be considered for a lean transformation.

Encouraging employees to maintain high-production quantities, great dividends and individual work efforts are not the elements required in lean. There needs to be a change in behaviour to be brought about. Instead of individual efforts, the members need to work as a team to a problem-solving culture. It needs to be understood how people integrate with other elements of lean management to bring in continuous improvement in the organization. You also need to analyze the rift between your organization’s current capabilities and those that need to be developed for lean success. Once you analyze these rifts, the HR team can begin working upon them to reduce these gaps.

Many companies select candidates for employment based on their problem-solving skills. But then, it is also important to continually train the employees for better benefits. It is the role of the managers to develop the members in the organization for lean outcomes. For lean engagement, it is important that you analyze the organization’s strengths and weaknesses first. This will help you identify the capabilities that need to be developed.

There are lean workshops conducted all the year round in different areas of the country, which teach you how lean behaviours and capabilities are affected. These workshops also teach how HR participation in lean process is important. But, unfortunately, the HRs have never been completely engaged within an organization. They are considered only when some help is needed. This is the case with almost every small as well as large company all around the country. In fact, HRs needs to be involved from the very beginning because these are the people who can be most helpful when any changes need to be made.

If you want to learn and understand what lean is and how lean thinking and processes can be applied in an organization, you can attend Lean Summit India that is scheduled on 9th and 10th Dec 2015.

Lean Implementer Workshop Preview September 2015

Lean Implementer Workshop Preview September 2015

There are a number of lean organizations that have been evolved all over the world. This practice was authorized in September 2007 as the “Lean Global Network” that spread over 17 countries. “Lean Management Institute of India” is one of the institutes under the Lean Global Network, which is promoting lean thinking across India.

It is based on the principle of sharing – educating – learning. Sharing thoughts involves summits, public speaking and publications. Educating the people who are not yet aware is done by company coaching or workshops carried out within the company or in public. Research, co-learning projects and creating lean contents are few methods of learning lean practices implementation.

If you are keen on learning about lean thinking and practices, you must involve yourself in lean workshops. There are many lean workshops in India that you can attend all the year round in different cities. ‘Lean Implementer workshop’ is one of them. This is a three day workshop carried out in four different cities of India – Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

If you are interested to learn about lean management and want to implement this practice in the organization you work in, to bring positive results in terms of thinking, activity and the processes involved at all levels, then you must definitely attend these workshops. Whether you are a manager, engineer, executive or any member of the staff, you must attend this workshop for positive results. Even supplier development professionals can benefit from these workshops to enhance their supply chain capability.

This workshop consists of the ‘Lean Practitioner Certification Program’ which combines knowledge and skill development to bring proficiency that can help in tackling business challenges in a better way. It also teaches A3 Management, which explains the benefits of the PDCA cycle to bring in improvement in any organization.

You can register for attending these workshops in your preferred city. The list of upcoming workshops is as under.

Mumbai – 21,22,23 September 2015

Bangalore – 5,6,7 November 2015

Delhi – 6,7,8 January 2016

Chennai – 9,10,11 March 2016

2 Core Capabilities in Lean Product and Process Development System

What are the Proficiency Skills that a Development System must have?

Leaders should always be working with sincerity to provide a healthy and secure working environment to its team members in order to help them work efficiently. It is the leaders who are responsible to instill the feelings of courage, honesty and team work within their team. Apart from all this, it is also necessary that the development leaders provide lean practices that provide the members of the organization with the ability to analyze and detect abnormal working conditions, interact with other team members to solve these issues and to be able to work to deal with these conditions effectively.

How to detect abnormal working conditions?

It is a crucial role of developers to solve problems and reduce risks. In order to solve problems effectively, developers must be able to first analyze if the working conditions are normal or not. They need to check if they are at the stage they need to be in the project they are working on in order to achieve the required success or are they lacking somewhere? It is important to keep analyzing the working processes from time to time to be informed of problems, if any as early as possible. You must also be having a working model to compare with while you are working to see if you are running at the right pace.

How to effectively interact with other team members?

After you have analyzed unexpected working conditions, it is important to convey the same to other team members so that you can collectively work to solve the issues. This works as a signal to call every member to attention. This works just like the “andon”, a manufacturing term referring to a system to notify the management and other workers of a quality or process problem in the organization. Now that you along with your team members have analyzed what the problem is, you need to have a powerful system that can react to and resolve this issue before its too late.

How to react to the problem effectively?

The management system should have a plan that can respond to abnormal working conditions and provide rapid support to developers. They must have backup plans for any such continual events that may occur in the organization. The system must be able to resolve any technical issues, promote profitable team work and grow organizational proficiency. The organization must have a regular check for cost and timing involved in the working processes. They must be having audits based on efficient designs, cost targets, delivery aspects and system compatibility. These checks must be altered from time to time to support the new requirements.

You must have such leaders in your organization who can help to analyze and solve problems effectively by working as a team. You can resolve technical issues with ease by focusing on improving the organizational capabilities. You must form a habit of performing lean practices in your organization to build strength and a better performance.

How to Analyze if your Efforts are leading you to Improvement?

What is the PDCA cycle?

PDCA refers to plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust. Different industries refer to this cycle with different names like Deming cycle, Shewhart cycle or control cycle. Other versions of PDCA include PDSA (plan-do-study-act) and OPDCA (observe-plan-do-check-act). Whatever it is known as but, what it deals with is the same. It is a stepwise management method used to control and maintain business and help in continuous improvement of its processes. The four major steps of this cycle are:

Plan: Analyze what your expected outputs are. Based on that, set up your objectives and procedures that can help in delivering those results. Try starting on a small scale to test what results you achieve. You can then expand the procedures if you get positive results.

Do: Start implementing on what you have planned. Execute the procedures that you have intended to follow. Collect all possible data which can be helpful to you for the next two steps.

Check: Make a chart of the results you had expected in the ‘planning’ stage and the results you achieved after the ‘do’ stage. Compare both the results to determine the differences if any. If you have already got what you had expected or even more than that, then there can be nothing better and you can continue with your processes on a larger scale to achieve the desired results. But, if you see a difference in both the results, you will need to look for a different implementation act to follow in order to lessen the gap between the expected and achieved results.

Act: Now, you must act on the new set of procedures made after the ‘check’ stage, for obtaining better results than earlier. If you are successful at achieving the expected results, then this becomes your new practice method or else, you need to go back to the ‘plan’ stage and keep on improving on your processes until you achieve what you desire.

Generally, we are very disturbed to know that we have to shift from our comfort zone and work as per the changes made in the organization. But, if we want to benefit from our work done, we will have to not only make a one-time change but, in fact, we need to keep making continuous changes to our working environment as and when demanded to bring out the best results.

Unfortunately, certain organizations follow only the PD approach, where they plan and do and then stop after that. They do not want to check for any differences between their planned and expected results. They find this approach as time-saving but, they fail to understand that this PD shortcut is going to lead them to nowhere in the future. How can we know if we have achieved efficient solutions to our problems if we cannot compare our pre-implementation and post-implementation data?

By following the methodical, scientific PDCA cycle, you will be able to transform yourself to better focus on understanding and maximizing customer value and putting in more targeted efforts. The PDCA methodology will help you learn how to analyze problems, investigate root causes, try out new solutions, check for their impact and adjust accordingly. So, it is best to avoid shortcuts and keep on continually improving on your methods for better results. Now, it is for you to decide where your organization stands after putting in a number of efforts to improve your results. Are you the one who follows the PDCA or are you more inclined towards the PD shortcut?

Lean Management Institute of India is a Non-profit institute, responsible for advancing lean thinking & practices across India through its lean workshops, summits and training programs. They develop hypotheses on lean management and experiment to see what works best in the given real world scenario while creating more value for customers with fewer resources.

How Lean Transformation Influences Business?

Lean transformation is about improving your business by organizing the activities and working systems of the organization to gain more benefits and value by eliminating wastage.  It helps every individual to identify the amount of wasted time and effort and encourages them to work together as a team and create a project that maintains growth by taking into account the satisfaction not only of the customers but also of the employees.

It is true that if you look at a problem positively, you will also get positive results because you will definitely change the way you perform and act towards improving the problem. It is not easy to get the results immediately. 70% of Lean Transformation efforts fail for the first time. There are only 2% of businesses who try again and get the results they want. On an average, businesses are able to see over a 30% improvement by implementing these efforts for 2-3 years.

At times, it is seen that small department workers want to retry on the transformation process but cannot help it because the higher authorities do not want to go back over the whole process again if they have failed for the first time. But, Mike Hoseus, a faculty member at the Lean Enterprise Institute and co-author of the award-winning book Toyota Culture, says that it is possible for a small unit worker to influence a company’s lean efforts. He says that lean transformations in fact begin in a small unit in order to experiment and then when the results are seen to be positive, the same theory and concepts are applied to other sections of the company that line up a series of manufacturing or non-manufacturing processes.

Hoseus says, “Demonstrate success then you’ll be able to communicate with other departments and the next level up. Start with what you can control in your department, plant, or team and use plan-do-check-act to communicate success. Plan-do-check-act shows management where problems have been solved and where help is needed going forward.”

Plan-do-check-act or PDCA is a four-step management method used in businesses for control and continuous improvement of processes. It involves setting up the objectives and procedures that are necessary to deliver results with the expected output, implementing the plan and executing the process, checking if the obtained results are close enough to the expected targets and analyzing the differences between the two and taking action on improving the same.

Certain work cultures succeed better than others to implement Lean Practices. Collaborative cultures work together as a team and the information flows freely among all the individuals in the organization. In a hero-based culture, the information is filtered only through certain decision making and action taking bodies. In a political based culture, the information is spread based on if the holder wants to spread it or not and in a command and control culture, there is only one decision maker in the organization. The best work cultures are the collaborative and hero-based cultures because the other two do not provide learning environments.

Try to make your own a collaborative or hero work culture and implement lean practices for better results by eliminating waste.

Practice Lean Thinking at Work (Even if your Boss doesn’t care)

It is a popular misconception that lean thinking and lean transformation strategies are meant only for those who are at the managerial level. Quite contrary to this lean methodologies can be easily understood and followed by each and every person in an organization.

In case you are wondering how can lean practice even be implemented  if those in the ‘top’ are not doing much about it  – then you need to keep in mind that there are some basic elements or we can even call them as goals which are more or less equally looked up on by every member of an organization. If each employee works on these common goals, it surely will improve productivity of the workforce. The Lean India Summit throws light on how employees can practice lean philosophy with little or no guidance from their bosses.

Here is how it can be done:

Intentions

Intentions are usually stable as compared to elements like actions driven by motivations or change in motivational issues. For example, almost all the managers/ bosses intend to keep the unit cost down by manufacturing parts which can be cheaper as and when possible.

Calculations

A lot of calculation goes into getting any kind of work done (be it productivity related or motivation of the employees) in an organization. As per the famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman we can subconsciously reduce any complex problem to the part we can solve. Thus as an employee, if you feel that certain work is difficult or needs more time for execution, then all you need to do is subconsciously calculate the steps to be taken to solve the issue. The lean workshops in Bangalore will guide on you on how you can do these mental calculations and bring a change in your subconscious thinking.

Actions

At the end, everyone wants results. Be it the boss or the lower level worker. You should always gear your intentions and calculations towards measurable actions. This way, not only will you get the expected results but you can also improve your performance at work.

One major thing which you need to keep in mind while following these three points is context in which you do these activities. The context can be societal, cultural, organizational or national. The social context does have an impact on the goals which are picked and strategies taken to achieve the goal. For example a company which is committed towards producing quality goods will never roll out products which are below standard.

Lean transformation is all about making positive changes in the organization in such a way that it is beneficial for its employees, customers as well as to the organization on a whole. And every single individual’s contribution to this end is counted. So even if your boss is not involved in lean practices we recommend that you continue with your lean work ethics. As gradually your efforts will bring your professional as well as personal gains. Practice lean methodology and bring a change to your organization!

 

Transform Yourself into a Lean Organization

Lean is the word – be it your body type or organization structure. Lean Organization is a term which is used and rather over used time and again yet is not completely understood by many.

Lean Management Institute of India (LMII) is a nonprofit entity driven towards promoting ‘Lean Thinking’ in organizations in order to provide the best quality services to the customers, with fewer resources and zero wastage. In this blog post we help you understand what does a Lean Organization actually means and how you can transform your organization into a Lean one.

What does Lean mean in Lean Organization?

The essence of Lean is providing maximum customer value and minimizing waste. That is building more values for your customers, but with fewer resources.

A Lean Organization recognizes customer value and thereby gears its key resources towards improving and increasingly it continuously. It does this by changing the focus of management towards enhancing the horizontal flow of products and services rather than simply focusing on separate assets and technologies in the vertical departments. Along with this Lean Organizations aims at bringing down the costs of its goods and services by eliminating waste from the entire value streams.

How to transform your Organization into a leaner one?

You can very easily turn into a Lean Organization, all you need is to be clear about your organization’s mission and goals. Once you are clean on this front, you just need to follow the below given steps.

Honest Assessment of your work practices so that you cut down the current practices which might be inconvenient to your customers. The best example can be cutting down on cost of production by trying to get the raw materials from a local provider rather than from a provider in a distant place. This way not only will you save on shipping charges but will also get your raw materials sooner than before.

Intelligent Cutting Down of the Workforce is the next step. As difficult as it may seem a leaner and more productive workforce is far better than a beefed up one. Think about the possibilities of outsourcing your work rather than spending much more on the in-house team.

Appreciate and Give Credit to your employees for their hard work and dedication towards their work and the organization. This way not only will you motivate them, but will also encourage them to come up with fresh ideas and thereby make meaningful contribution the organization.

Regularly Revise and Improvise your method of operation. This will give you a realistic picture of how your organization is working and where it is lagging behind. Transforming into a Lean Organization is an on-going process, thus regular revision and improvising of your working methods is an important step.

Along with this we recommend that you attend Lean Summits and Lean Workshops on a regular basis to stay updated on the new and fresh ideas and innovations which will eventually help your organization.

Follow these Steps and Find your Lean Inspiration!