Congratulations! You have been certified as Green Belt and are ready to start with your first project. You want to apply everything you have learnt this far. However, this often appears to be harder than expected. Where to start? And how to be sure your first project regarding improvement becomes a success?

In this blog, we will help you, as certified Green Belt, to start your first successful project by giving your some tips.

Start in your working place:

Lean philosophy is about bottum-up improvement. Work from the working place upwards to the top. 

1. Employees know how processes work. This knowledge is necessary to become able to improve! 
2. Employees must be involved in improvement projects to create foundation for changes. 

The first step that should be taken is called a Gemba Walk. Gemba stands for working place, which means a Gemba Walk stands for an actual walk around the working place. Observe the processes that take place here. And remember: Go see, ask why and show respect. 

This means observing a process without judgment. Ask your employees what they are doing and more importantly how. 

By making a Gemba Walk, you show you are involved as a Green Belt and will get more feeling for the processes that will take place to achieve improvement. 

Make sure there is understanding between the client and the working place

After making a Gemba Walk, much information is collected. This input leads to improvement of the processes. By consulting with the management team, you will find certain things in the organisation, after having made the Gemba Walk, that can be improved. Eventually, you should make a plan in order to carry through with the improvement. 

Prevent terminology

To ´lean´ your process, it is possible to create an ´Ishikawa’ or ‘muda’. This sounds logical to a Green Belt, but your employees might find this less easy to understand. Try to use as less terminology as possible, but just say things such as ‘mapping processes’, ‘eliminating waste within processes’ et cetera. This is easier to understand than those Japanese terms. 

Do not lose yourself in all those details

As a Green Belt you should realise your added value lies in taking a step back from the workfloor. People might lose themselves in thinking of solutions to problems, instead of analysing first. As a Green Belt, take a step back and think rationally of effective solutions after analysis. 

Het bericht The execution of your first improvement project 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.