The power of successfully implementing Lean in your organisation is motivation. It is important to inspire your employees. This actually may sound easier than it can be. Challenges arise in a culture of continuous improvement. The Lean Team Coach might be of great importance to reach the goals you want to. But how?

The Lean mindset

The Lean philosophy improves organisation by focusing on the customer. It is all about maximising customer value in processes. However, we do not define what is and what is not important. Our customers do. By taking into account what their requirements are, organisations should structure their processes. And do not forget your employees are the people with knowledge about how to do so. Because who knows better how to fulfill certain tasks in processes than those who have been doing so for years? However, it might be hard to enthuse and motivate your employees. This is where the Lean Team Coach might come in handy. 

The role of the Lean Team Coach

Most of all, the Lean Team Coach focuses on improving collaboration. 

Most organisations are divided in departments. The teams in these departments consist of employees with comparable tasks. Think of IT, human resources et cetera.  However, this manner of organising companies leads to employees experiencing responsibility for their tasks instead of the entire organisation. And this results in competition between departments, instead of collaboration. 

If you want to go fast, go alone

If you want to go far, go together!

– James Andeau –

Joint understanding

The Lean Team Coach helps teams to create insight in the organisation. By showing their influence they might be able to see the bigger picture. Employees are notified and know each other’s expectations. They then become able to create value for each other. What do your employees find important? How do they see quality and customer value? This will differ per team! 

Structure en regularity

The Lean Team Coach plays a role in disciplinary work with Lean. He or she makes sure Lean stays within the focus of an organisation and motivates employees to begin with small steps to create structure in their work. This can be done by implementing day- or weekstarts. 

Such a coach makes a difference…

…by strengthening the power of improvement that an organisation already possesses. The way in which processes have been structured often do not meet the customer’ requirements. In our experience, employees are not facilitated enough. They might be frustrated, because improvement seems unreachable. The Lean Team Coach supports the cycle of improvement and looks for a connection to be able to take the next step on your own organisational Lean journey.

Het bericht What role does a Lean Team Coach play? verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Viable organisations

Viability becomes more and more important. It is important to be able to adapt to your environment nowadays. Not only organisations have noticed, but individuals have as well. But what actually is viability? And how do you become a viable organisation?

But what is a viable organisation?

When would one say an organisation is viable? There is no clear definition, but viability means being able to adapt quickly to changing environments. It is basically another word for agility. This is why these terms are used to refer to the same meaning. Imagine the demand of trainings being cut in half, for example due to the corona crisis. How fast would your organisation be able to adapt? This would define your adaptability, or viability. 

How to create viable organisations?

The way in which responsibilities are assigned is important in the creation of viability. An organisation that is structured hierarchically with many layers will not be very viable. Decisions take a long time to make due to all these layers. An organisation without all these layers, is more viable. Creating Agility within your company allow employees to make their own decisions and therefore possibly make mistakes. Because this is what Agility is about too. Earlier, not only time was invested in consideration, but in analysis as well. This way, risks could be decreased.

For whom will you become Agile?

Not only the question of how to become a viable organisation is important. The question of why might be even more relevant. For whom will you become viable? Creating maximum customer value is your final goal. Will your customers be able to notify the added value of all production processes and is he or she willing to pay for these? Remember that not every adaptation can be considered an improvement. 

Het bericht How to become a viable organisation? verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

The rate of outflow

As a company, you want to meet the customer demand. But how fast do you want to do so?  You should have a vision and strategy based on the customer demand. Because, logically, customers do not like to wait. The question remains if you are able to satisfy enough customers per day, or even per minute? This is called the rate of outflow.  

Calculation of the rate of outflow

Imagine twenty orders of three meals have been placed. The customers that have ordered those arrive one minute apart. This means, sixty meals should be prepared in the kitchen. However, customers do not want to wait any longer than twenty minutes; one would say the lead time is twenty minutes. The rate of outflow can be calculated by dividing the amount of work yet to be finished by the lead time. In this case, this would mean (60 (amount of meals))/ (20 (lead time)) = three meals per minute. The first three customers that have arrived, should wait twenty minutes. The customers that arrive later wait twenty minutes as well. But in the end, no customers will have waited longer than twenty minutes. This system is balanced out! However, when customers arrive whose lead time is no longer than ten minutes, the system does not apply anymore.

Another example:

It often takes up to six weeks to gain a license from the township. On average, there are sixty applications to process. The rate of outflow would therefore be 60/6 = 10 licenses per week. But imagine citizens agreeing with three weeks per license. What would the township do? They adapt their processes to satisfy their customers. This means the rate of outflow would then be 60/3 = 20 licenses per week, which means it has doubled! The law that we have used twice up until now is called Little’s Law. John Little was an American who proved this law in 1961. He is considered the founder of the science of marketing.

Het bericht Rate the outflow to meet the customer demand verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

The term World Class Manufacturing most certainly has existed for quite some time now. It was first mentioned around ‘80-’90 of the last century. The whole technique is not new either. Tools from the three most well-known methods are combined, namely: Lean Management, Six Sigma and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). World Class Manufacturing is applied to increase quality and the speed of production and to decrease total costs.

What are the main ideas behind World Class Manufacturing?

WCM can not necessarily be called a technique or method, as much as a management concept. In other words, it does not have a certain structure, but uses concepts to continuously improve performances. To do so, it makes use of tools of Lean, Six Sigma and Total Productive Maintenance. A few of these most important concepts are:

• Benchmarking
  The European meaning of benchmarking is known by many people. They focus on comparing different business processes and using the best one of these as example for the others. This way, business will achieve next steps regarding improving such processes. However, the Japanese meaning of benchmarking is different. Here, creating a situation to begin with is the main focus. From this starting point, businesses start improving. 
• Kaizen
  Benchmarking – constantly comparing different business processes – creates a foundation for improvement ideas. And these should be used to adapt and improve these business processes. This can be recognized as the principle ‘Kaizen’: take small steps each day, which is known from the Lean toolbox. 
• Overall Equipment Effectiveness
  One of the first things you will look at when using World Class Manufacturing is the uptime of your production. This is what Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is all about. Because when your production is not optimized yet, for example due to maintenance, it would not make any sense to improve your business processes.

What steps to take towards World Class Manufacturing

As just stated, WCM is not an actual method. However, there are a few steps most companies use to achieve the application of World Class Manufacturing. These are listed below. But mind you, these steps do not have to be taken in a specific order.

• Fine tuning machines and decreasing the time it takes to install them. It is important to be time efficient when it comes to production. A Lean tool that is relevant here is SMED, which stands for Single Minute Exchange of Dies.
• Another step that can be taken is a decrease of work-in-progress (WIP): in many production environments, having much stock is considered normal. This might help in case of any type of disturbance. However, WIP is very costly, takes up space and distracts from the production process. 
• To satisfy the customer, many changes are made to the end product. But keep in mind these changes should be made after the final cut, when they are thought of during the design phase. 
• Focus on the minimum: act on the demand of customers instead of creating stock. 
• Cellulair production: production processes should be distinguished because of their nature. 

And finally..

World Class Manufacturing suits the philosophy of Lean and Six Sigma. Frankly, these kind of belong together. If you want to find out more, do not hesitate to contact us!

Het bericht World Class Manufacturing verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Many organisations want to achieve an advantage by being better than their competitors. This is often done by making sure their processes are handled more efficiently, or in other words: cheaper. By lessening the costs and upgrading the quality of their products or services, organisations are able to consolidate their position in the market. And quite frequently, the processes to achieve such goals are filed under ‘Operational Excellence’. But what actually is Operational Excellence? And to which extent does the Lean philosophy fit in there?

What is Operational Excellence?

As just stated, Operational Excellence creates the opportunity for organisations to distinguish themselves from their competitors by excellerate in production processes. It originates from the model “CUstomer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines”, which was first mentioned by Treacy and Wiersema in 1993. And not only did they create Operational Excellence, but they also defined two strategies which lets organisations become able to specialise in Product Leadership or Customer Intimacy. 

Operational Excellence makes sure organisations strive towards a service where a customer’s wishes take on a central role within all processes. This means everything that is produced, is delivered when was asked and at the pre-arranged price. Why? Because this results in customer satisfaction. And when customers are content, employees of the organisation will most likely be more productive, because they become motivated. This will lead to a decrease of the total costs.

Features

To be able to fulfill the philosophy that is called Operational Excellence, many organisations invest in Supply Chain Management. This type of management strives for in-time stock and quick delivery of products. Because as you were just able to read, Operational Excellence focuses on the needs of the customer instead of those of the organisation.

A feature of Operational Excellence is an organisation being task-oriented. This means no unnecessary work is done and data is collected. Through analyzing this data, organisations can make sure their business processes become more efficient.

If organisations choose to apply this philosophy, they are able to gain a competitive advantage. How, you ask? It is actually rather simple. Because they will manage to offer their products/services at a lower price, considering they optimized their business processes, their profit increases. 

But what about Lean and Operational Excellence?

As you may have noticed does Operational Excellence actually have quite some things in common with Lean (Six Sigma). This is why Lean is actually the most used methodology to achieve Operational Excellence. 

If you are a little hesitant on why they have so much in common, this is a little overview. Both methodologies strive towards improving processes of an organisation. Both choose to do so by using a programmatic approach to be able to realise these process improvements structurally. And continuous improvement takes on a central role in both of these philosophies. 

By focusing on customer value, process steps and eliminating non-added value activities, operational processes can be continuously improved which will eventually lead to Operational Excellence. Using the knowledge and qualities of your employees and effectively apply technology and innovation will lead to an increase of productivity, which is basically another word for process efficiency, and a much more reliable process (outcome). 

The following Figure is a house, which is called the Lean house. This is a visualisation of the system which describes Lean: process improvement. It focuses on customer value and standardisation by striving for the best quality and littlest lead time to result in a more efficient process and eventually lower total costs.

Operational Excellence is becoming more and more popular. But of course, if you want to apply this philosophy to your organisation, this will take more than just a snap of the fingers. It is important to make a change in behaviour. And not only does it take a long-term perspective to achieve these goals, it also requires perseverance. In other words, fully accepting, correctly applying and borrowing Operational Excellence within the entire organisation can actually take five to ten years.

Het bericht Operational Excellence? Here’s what you need to know about it verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

The literal definition of Six Sigma has been explained. But what does Lean mean? It stands for slender or slim. In other words, using Lean within your company leads to ‘slimmer’ organisational processes, because it focuses on eliminating waste. Waste is defined as elements that do not add any form of value. By removing these unnecessary and unwanted elements, your company will be able to perform optimally. And this will lead to continuous improvement within your company. 

In order to be able to improve continuously, it is necessary to create a working environment where customer value and employee take on a centralized role. Keeping your employees enthusiastic and motivated is one of the pillars of Lean and can be done by involving them in decisions and improvements. 

Not only will this result in them being more satisfied about their work, but it creates a more efficient and sustainable working environment.

How to apply this within your organisation?

The best place to start is the problem. Take a process that is not running quite as smoothly as you would like, for example. Using Lean Six Sigma, this means you will start mapping out the different types of waste. There are eight in total, namely: 

1. Transport

This first type of waste is as simple as it sounds. Moving something from A to B falls under this subcategory. 

2. Inventory

In contrast to transport, the concept of inventory is less narrow. This covers the entire stock from raw materials to printed out or digital complaint forms. Another example could be the (un)opened emails on your computer, or everything in your warehouse, if you have one. 

3. Motion

Motion is different from transport. In this category, they mean actual movements. Think of walking to the printer, getting a glass of water or even turning around. But not only your movements, the ones within your digital system and database are meant as well. If you open your mail to look something up, then forget what you were about to look up and have to switch screens to check again, this is considered a waste of motion and thus time. 

4. Waiting

Waiting time is inescapable, because processes take up time. However, try to minimise this!

5. Overproduction

As the name implies, overproduction means producing more than necessary. This may lead to an increasing inventory. As we saw before, this can be considered a waste as well. 

6. Overprocessing

Overprocessing means doing more than necessary. This often happens because organisations think it might add customer value, but quite frequently, this is not the case. It mainly results in appearance. Think of stores wrapping up something you bought for yourself. This is only an extra (unnecessary) service.

7. Defects

However, this subcategory of waste might be the most risky one. Worst case scenario: the process of production has to start all over because of one mistake. This can include a small error, e.g. typo in the email address, but it could be much worse.

8. Skills

The last form of waste takes the skills of your employees into account. This might be lack of talent, but could be overclassification as well. 

Lean tools

To remember these eight types, a mnemonic could come in handy. Whenever you are talking about waste, think of TIMWOODS. If you were wondering, these are all first letters of the types of waste, from number one to eight.

Apply TIMWOODS before diving in your project, to map all possible issues that could arise along the way. And if you are lucky, it might show some improvements that could be realised quite easily. Holding onto continuous improvement would therefore become easier. 

Besides using Lean management, Lean projects and tools such as TIMWOODS, there are other things that can be applied when you are striving towards continuous improvement. Examples are 5S and Value Stream Map. An improvement board might help as well. This leads to involvement of your employees. And keep in mind, when you have been using these tools for a while, continuous improvement is not an aim of your organisation anymore, but it is presumed to be natural. 

Het bericht Continuous improvement using Lean? verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Do you ever feel like you are missing something?

This might be the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. But how can you be sure? 

You are interested in the way business is handled. Often, you find yourself thinking processes can be improved. You prefer to instantly act instead of ‘adding it to your to-do list’. Do you recognize yourself in this description? Then Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is definitely meant for you! 

The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt can be followed when you are already a Yellow-, Orange or Green-Belter. This Black Belt is just a next step in your Lean Six Sigma career, which will provide you with a deeper process level and opportunities of improvement. This will lead to an impact on the entire organisation. 

How to start?

Processes can be found everywhere people work. Through a goal and some input, an output is achieved. Here is an example:

Imagine working at a bank. Think about incoming mortgage requests. As an employee of the bank, you would like to know if you should accept these requests or not. In order to do so, you should set up an inquiry. After analysing the measurements, you can choose whether the requests should be accepted or denied. Pay attention to qualitative and quantitative commitment, because this will lead to lower costs for the customer.  

After these analyses, think of possible solutions. When it has been mapped out which steps should be taken, the implementation of the solution is next. Make sure to involve your employees, therefore you know change will lead to the result you want to get. Finally, it is not only important to make changes, but to keep it that way as well. Sustainability first! 

The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training

The training that continues where the Green Belt stops, is the Black Belt Training. The main concern of this training is working on improvement full time. Keep in mind this is not always possible, especially with smaller companies. Black Belt also enables talking about improvement, structures, methods and teams with middle management. This Belt also learns you to take the leading role in improvement projects that do not take place within your own department. In conclusion, Black Belt can be seen as unmissable during realisation and conservation of the Lean culture: continuous improvement.

Het bericht Does the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training suit me? verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Why to apply Ishikawa? Here's why!

In this article, you will be able to find what Ishikawa is en the six reasons why you should apply it.

An approachable method to improve the quality of your organisation

The Ishikawa diagram is also known as the Fishbone model and the cause-and-effect diagram. To master your quality, there are seven tools you can use. This diagram is one of them. Getting to the center of the problem and solving it is the main aim of the Ishikawa diagram.

Brief history

In 1982, Kaoru Ishikawa was working at Kawasaki, which is known because of its motors. He noticed his colleagues getting frustrated because they felt unheard and powerless when failures arose. He then developed the Ishikawa diagram. A flaw can often be divided in more than one cause. One of the results is employees solving their own problems (thus bottom-up), because the main causes then become known. Nowadays, more and more organisations are looking for a method to trigger bottom-up problem solving, which is why Ishikawa is more relevant than ever. 

Problem to solution

Planning a brainstorm session sometimes leads to unstructured meetings in which not everything is discussed. Using Ishikawa to structure your brainstorm may cause you to find causes to problems which had been unnoticed before.

Applying the Ishikawa diagram

It takes three steps to create an Ishikawa diagram:

1. Place the issue on the head of the fish;
2. Determine the main categories of the possible causes and then
3. determine the smaller causes by asking “why” or “is caused by..”.

Six reasons to apply Ishikawa diagrams:

• When looking for possible causes within a process, solution, problem or situation;
• If you want to look for the relation between different causes of a problem;
• To come up with a suitable solution which covers the entire problem and not just part of it;
• It is a team activity which leads to joint understanding of the problem;
• To give your employees insight in the problem and give them the opportunity to influence the improvement of their own process;
• When you are ready to initiate other projects within your organisation on your way to improvement;

The 6M Fishbone Model

There are many forms of the Ishikawa diagram available. However, the 6M Fishbone Model is the most common. The problem is divided into potential causes, which leads to the following categories: Methods, Machines, Men, Material, Measurements, Mother nature (environment). Sometimes, two more categories are added, namely Management and Maintenance.

Let's go!

As stated before, the Ishikawa diagram was actually conducted to involve employees in the process of improvement. This approachable method made realising progression possible by creating the opportunity to solve problems bottom-up. Start improving right away!

• Introducing Lean
• 10 tips Clean Desk Policy
• Lean thinking in 6 steps

Het bericht Why to apply Ishikawa? Here’s why! verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

There are tools for every phase that can be used to ensure the success of a Lean Six Sigma project. One of these tools is the A3 report, which is used during the Improve phase.

The A3 report is used to identify and comprehensibly convey the most important project information related to improvement of the process. This makes it easier to take decisions that influence the rest of the process.

As its name suggests, the intention is for the report to fit on a single page. This Lean tool is most suited to the completion of relatively short Kaizen improvement tasks. As a result, A3 reports would be less suited to more complicated projects undertaken in a DMAIC environment. Nonetheless, a good outlook on processes is important in order to make the right decisions, regardless of the project.

The structure of an A3 report

An A3 report often has the same set divisions, but it can also contain a number of additional points. Which divisions are useful depends on the state. The below example demonstrates what an A3 report may look like.

Background
Here, a short description of the problem and its cause is provided with emphasis on its importance to the organisation and the measures that are in place.

Current state
The current state involves a description or visual representation of the problem that must be tackled.

Goals
A representation of the ideal state without the problem having occurred. You could consider this the desired state.

Analysis
An analysis must be performed in order to determine the cause of the problem. The findings from this analysis are entered here.

Recommendations
Here, the solution(s) and measures necessary to eliminate the causes identified in the analysis are described.

Implementation plan
Once the necessary measures have been made clear, a plan of approach is required. Here, the tasks, data, duration, responsibilities and status related to the process are described. This step is usually added if the A3 report is to be used as a progress tracking report.

Follow up
These are the tasks that must be carried out after implementation to ensure the continued good future performance of the process.

Results
This is an optional step to be used when the A3 report serves as a progress tracking report. It describes the progress made by the implementation plan and the measures taken.

The layout and presentation of A3 reports can vary greatly. We have provided a number of examples to give you an idea.

Het bericht A3 report verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

The value stream is a collection of activities that is required to produce a product or service and eventually deliver it to the customer. During the value stream analysis, activities that add value to processes are separated from activities that cause wastes. This provides a clear overview of the entire process and indicates where improvements can be made to encourage better flow.

Value-Added Flow Chart

The Value-Added Flow Chart is used to improve runtimes and productivity by dividing process activities into ‘value-adding’ and ‘wastes’. It is important for the process to be visually represented in order to create a clear overview. Creating or interpreting a Value-Added Flow Chart is very simple.

1. Place all process steps in order from start to finish.
2. Create a diagram with every step in its own box.
3. Calculate the time necessary for every step and add this to the boxes.
4. Add together the times for every step and you will have calculated the total runtime.
5. Determine which steps do not add any value to the process.
6. Place the steps that do not add any value to the right of the steps that do add value.
7. Analyse both sides and determine which activities can be improved in order to shorten the total process runtime.
8. Visualise the adjusted process and keep improving it.

However, this is just one part of the Value Stream Map. While the Value-Added Flow Chart helps when it comes to identifying improvement opportunities, the Value Stream Map goes one step further.

Value Stream Map

The Value-Added Flow Chart reflects the current state of the process, focusing primarily on a specific level (e.g. a single process). In the Value Stream Mapping process, this would be similar to the ‘Current State’. But because the Value Stream Map reflects the overall process at a general level and therefore contains much more information than a flow diagram (consider stock, staff involved and transport), it is better to view the Current State map as an extended version of a Value-Added Flow Chart. In addition to this, multiple processes are often necessary to develop the end product reflected in the Value Stream Map.

Once the current state has been put into perspective, a ‘Future-State Map’ is created. The name says it all. This is a future representation of the process – or – of the desired state. By comparing this to the Current State map, suggestions for improvement can be devised in order to achieve the desired state. These results eventually form part of an improvement schedule with a timeframe. Please note: the desired state will not be achieved overnight. This too is a process of constant adjustment and improvement.

The below images demonstrate what a Value Stream Map may look like.

Het bericht Value Stream Map (Value Stream Analysis) verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.