The Gemba is where the true value-adding activities to satisfy or serve the customer are performed. Gemba is a Japanese term meaning “actual place”, the place where truth is found. The ‘Gemba Walk’ is an activity that takes leadership to the front lines to look for waste and opportunities.
There are typically three types of Gemba walks...
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Over the past few months we have been working with a number of companies helping them with their strategic planning process. From company to company the process to develop/update their strategic plan is quite similar, however the results differ.
Based on discussions with clients, the common problem that prevents forward progress is a lack of focus. Almost all of these companies had too many improvement projects on their plate and, to borrow a phrase from an old movie, “a point in every direction is the same as no point at all.”
Here is how to narrow down the number of improvement projects.
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I just had the opportunity to revisit a business that I started working with a few years ago. I must say I was impressed with the progress that they have made over the past few years. Their operating performance and financial performance has improved dramatically! It was truly a pleasure to visit them and to review the results of their efforts. They have embraced workplace organization, performance management, and schedule adherence down to a daily timeframe. As a result, their Corporate KPI’s are improving month after month.
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“Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion, you have to light yourself on fire. – Fred Shero.” Dang, I wish I wrote that! It sums up exactly what I have been working on this week. Lighting yourself on fire is a pretty scary thing to do but, the Truth is, if you want to make a difference then that is exactly what needs to happen.
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The development of the Implementation Plan consists of defining the steps needed to achieve the design objectives and creating the control infrastructure for daily and weekly implementation activities.
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Lean Transformations begin as an idea, an idea that by doing something different we can be something different. In the security and comfort of our own thoughts, we can imagine how amazing it will be to work within a continuous improvement culture where our talents are recognized, supported, and our skills utilized. What a great place to be! No end-of-the month rushes, consistently making the numbers, everyone contributes, and life is good. Sounds great, right? So how do we get there? And why is it so hard?
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In a site-wide Lean transformation, success depends upon the use of a structured approach to deployment. Ensuring this success is a process of moving each value stream through the 5 basic steps of deployment: Stabilize, Flow, Takt, Pull, and Sustain. Let’s define each of these...
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Magic. It is real.
“What?” you say, “Isn’t magic just an illusion?”
I’m not talking about the kind of magic in which you are persuaded to believe in something that is not there. Real magic happens when you bring something into the world that wasn’t there before. Let me explain.
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“Work smarter, not harder” is a cliché tossed around as if what to do is just plain obvious. The problem with clichés is that while, the end result is obvious, getting to that end is not. Seriously, if we knew how to work smarter, we would already be doing it. So where to do we start?
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In your business moving fast and distilling large amounts of data quickly is absolutely necessary. The question then is how to work with what you have. Pulling out of the business death spiral requires a two-pronged approach ...
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