Lean tools – Lean Six Sigma Group

What role does a Lean Team Coach play?

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 08:59:08 +0000

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.

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Customer value according to Lean

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 12:28:23 +0000

As an organisation, you should improve continuously and keep developing in order to live up to the ever-changing environment regarding customer value. When handling according to agreements your company made about fulfilling the wishes of the customer, your organisation will do right. But what is this customer value? And how does Lean contribute to this?

What is customer value?

This term knows many definitions and there are many methods to determine this value as well. In relation to the Lean philosophy, the meaning behind customer value actually goes deeper than just this value. It means a product or service is delivered that satisfies the customer. He or she might choose to order from your company again.

But it is not the same thing as customer demand. Customer demand focuses on fulfilling the need of customers. However, often the customer him- or herself does not even know the need is there. The process of becoming conscious of these needs is important to companies. Here, you can gain customer value.

Why is creating customer value so important?

Creating customer value contributes to the growth of organisations. The ability to distinguish yourself as an organisation becomes more and more important with this market of competition. Simultaneously, customers are demanding more of products and services.

The increasing complexity and customers becoming more critical leads to a transition to a demand-economy. The focus is not on the current stock and how to reach the target group, but on what the target group wants and how to meet those requirements.

Organisations without commercial intent, think of schools or hospitals, have noticed the switch to the focus on customers. However, because the administrative work increases, some tasks of the core of the organisation have become really pressured. Even when looking at the government, it sometimes lacks focus on the ‘customer’, also known as citizens.

Every single one of these Dit vraagt om een significant andere benadering, waarbij problems have one thing in common: a switch towards customer needs should be made. Lean can contribute significantly to this.

How can customer value be improved?

Organisations know many ways to respond to customer needs. And these entail flexible processes that focus on the customer. The Lean philosophy supports with a structured approach that improve these processes.

While using tools and techniques that define the customer value, it becomes possible to examine which business processes supply added value. Those that do not should be minimised or even eliminated. Because in the long run, this will lead to more ‘spare’ time that can be applied to increase the customer value.

But keep in mind you should not only focus on the external customer. Every process has to do with a customer and these corresponding business processes create an output to colleagues or employees of other departments. When you, as an employee, see your own colleagues as (internal) customers as well, your collaboration will improve and intensify. Not only for you, but for your entire organisation and the external customers. This way, the common goal can be achieved: creating customer value.

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Rate the outflow to meet the customer demand

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 11:48:04 +0000

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.

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Theory of Constraints

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 13:32:23 +0000

A frequently returning term regarding processes is called a bottleneck. This means some kind of work overload is present. When these processes are improved, more effective result can be achieved. And thereby, more profit is obtained. This is called the Theory of Constraints (ToC).

What is the Theory of Constraints?

This methodology focuses on discovering the most limitative aspect of a process. This bottleneck is then eliminated systematically. Every (complex) system consists of more than one connected activities. Sometimes it becomes hard to focus on what is really important because of this. However, the Theory of Constraints aims at focusing on the goal your organisation wants to achieve and provides you with a set of tools to do so. There are three aspects of ToC:

The five steps of focus
Identifying and eliminating limitations.
The process of thinking
Tools for analysing and solving problems.
Throughput Accounting
Measuring performances and supporting decisions from the management team.

When analysing the processes within an organisation, there can be different types of limitations. ToC focuses on the one with the highest priority: the current limitation. Therefore, ToC tends to be the perfect methodology for the creation of fast improvements.

The five steps of focus

Identify the limitation
Identify the current limitation – or bottleneck – in the process.
Exploit the limitation
Make improvements as to tuning out the limitation while using the correct resources.
Make sure everything is inferior
Take another look at all activities in the process, in order to make sure they support the needs of the limitation.
Evaluate performances
If the limitation still exists during this step, think about eliminating other activities as well. Repeat this step until the limitation is actually removed. And keep in mind this sometimes means investments should be made.
Repeat the process
These five steps of focus are walked through in a cycle In other words, when one limitation is removed, the next can be handled immediately by starting at step one again.

The process of thinking

This tool has been developed to retrieve the unwanted effect of a limitation and replace it with a new one. Three questions that should be asked to do so are:

What should be changed?
To what should it be changed?
Which precise actions lead to this change?

Below, you can find some tools that can be applied to fulfill the idea of the process of thinking.

Current reality tree
Describe the current situation.
Evaporating cloud tree
Evaluate potential improvements.
Future reality tree
Describe the future situation.
Strategy and tactics tree
Compose a plan of action regarding improvements.

Throughput Accounting

Throughput Accounting is an accounting methodology which tries to eliminate harmful disturbances. It actually arose from traditional accounting methods that threaten the profit of an organisation to decrease. ToC makes an organisation mandatory to sell the entire stock in the foreseeable future. This might lead to an increase of profit on paper, but in reality, stock takes up this profit while it is still unsold. And this same money could be used to make other investments. However, ToC finds decreasing costs less important than focusing on the flow of products.

As said, ToC focuses on throughput accounting with the most important pillars: throughput, investments and operational costs.

Throughput
The time in which products are sold to customers.
Investments
Money that is tight to the organisation instead of usable: stock, machines, building(s), et cetera.
Operational costs
Money that is invested in the throughput of an organisation.

What are the advantages of the Theory of Constraints?

By applying ToC, the following advantages arise:

Increase of profit;
Quick improvements;
Improved capacity – by eliminating constraints, an organisation becomes able to produce more and more;
Decrease of lead time – the process flow will improve;
Less stock – the amount of work within a process decreases.

Some examples of ‘Constraints?’

Constraints can be defined as everything that limits an organisation in its progress. In other words, it keeps an organisation from its goal(s).

Physical
This includes actual equipment, but other tangible things such as lack of employees or space or shortage of material as well.
Policy-wise
The recommended way or working, procedures of the organisation or written agreements.
Paradigm
This category contains things such as habits. Think of “Machines should be turned on and working 24/7 in order to keep costs per product as low as possible”.
Demand of the market
When an organisation produces more than the market demand, it is categorized under demand of the market.

To conclude, the Theory of Constraints is able to assist you with solving problems regarding limitative factors within your organisation structurally. By applying this method cyclically, your organisational processes will improve continuously.

Het bericht Theory of Constraints verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Be ready for the future – use automation!

Jelle Marius — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 13:07:24 +0000

It is impossible to ignore the fact that the world is moving towards a better, more sustainable future. Even within the organisation and other businesses, this should be implemented. But how? In this blog you will read about new technologies to optimise processes and the importance of teamwork. Because by motivating each other and working together, an organisation will become ready to face the future, for example by automation.

Automation of processes

Many grander organisations have laid their focus on automatic process. The prediction is smaller organisation will do the same rather soon. And this will only continue to happen more and more. For starters, only simple, repeatable process steps will become automatic, but in the long run, other processes will too. Process optimisation is part of the automation of processes. And the goal is to let processes run more efficiently, make them less work intensive, decrease risks and make the organisation more profitable.

To keep up with the fast-changing technological developments, RPA was created. This replaces the traditional way of automation. Because in the past, it was important to have knowledge of and experience regarding automation. However, with the creation of new technology, the automation of processes are simplified and, ironically, automated.

Processes in the future

To prevent your organisation from staying behind on recent developments, it is important to visualise which processes within your business should be automated. Depending on the ambitions and strategy of your organisation, of course. Important questions here are:

Which processes are work intensive?
Which processes contain many mistakes?
Which processes have a bigger lead time?

Many organisations have experienced in the past, that taking the step towards automation can be very costly. Fortunately, RPA is easy to approach, because your organisation will be able to keep the same system structure. And why is that, you ask? Because the same systems will be used, in fact, only will they be controlled by robots instead of human beings. Not only will the probability of mistakes be heavily decreased, but a robot can keep on working 24/7 as well.

Focus on value

If RPA offers many advantages, then why is there still some resistance regarding the implementation of this tools? Because employees feel as if they might lose their jobs because of it. RPA makes their work easier, as they take over their repeatable and simple actions. Examples could be archiving emails. In other words, employees will fulfill less administrative tasks, which leads to more time available for customers. And in specific: delivering value to the customers.

When an organisation becomes successful, it facilitates its employees to focus on basic tasks. However, making the transition to an organisation that focuses on customer value is not as facile as might be thought. Employees should aim at higher team performances, which is the responsibility of the management team.

Would you call your organisation future-proof?

If you are intrigued and want to be ready for the future as an organisation, we surely want to assist you. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

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RPA might improve your organisation

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 12:30:28 +0000

Working more efficiently using robots

Everyone has heard of Artificial Intelligence nowadays. But why is this still not applied within every organisation? After automating many processes, there has arisen a new opportunity. This is called RPA, or: Robotic Process Automation. This enables an organisation to create many more opportunities for the future.

The Lean methodology

The Lean methodology is often used to optimise processes, because these will be fun more efficiently. From here on, it is easier to implement RPA. When looking in the Lean toolkit, RPA can be seen as the most recent and technological addition to it. Currently, Lean makes use of tools and techniques in business processes that optimise time, resources, possessions and productivity. And eventually, this increases quality as well as customer value.

The growth of Lean

Robots are able to support Lean to increase this quality, eliminate possible defects, reduce lead time and increase customer satisfaction. Looking at the growth potential of Lean, the graph below shows the phase of growth (the red line). It is expected the growth in all three phases could increase with 20% by implementing the use of robots.

And how about working more efficiently? Often, when companies are thinking about using robots, focus is laid only on these robots and processes are forgotten. Less, is more they think. The surface of the organisation is improved. However, this would only include the tip of the iceberg that is the organisation. In other words, this automation is hard to develop, prone to failure and takes up much time.

Cross-functional teams must work together to create a transparent process. The best solution to a problem must be chosen, tested and the effect it has must be measured. This way, it becomes clear in what way exactly robots make these processes more efficiently and what the impact is they have on the customer and organisation. You should strive towards a better solution for the organisation instead of the other way around.

Lean tools, techniques and principles might be able to offer great support. The tools that are used will focus on the process design first. This should be finished before the automation phase has started. Waste should therefore be eliminated and current tasks should be optimised.

Advantages of RPA

After implementing these robots, you will be able to work more efficiently, because:

Automation increases the percentage of FTR (First Time Right) by eliminating possible human errors.
You can work using Just-In-Time. This means the process of possessing information on the right moment should be automated.
RPA takes the robot out of the human being. Employees can focus on activities that increase value and increase customer satisfaction. Studies have shown people actually prefer their jobs when they feel autonomous, capable and in possession of a goal.
Robots are able to work 24/7. This is an unique power.
Robots are faster than human beings.
The data that is generated by the use of robots provide managers with more insight in the bottleneck of the process and gives them ideas on how to improve the organisation.
Using RPA hands you the opportunity to choose the capacity of the robots, whenever.

In other words, RPA gives an organisation many advantages to work more efficiently and moreover use these capacities optimally because employees are assigned tasks they are good at.

Het bericht RPA might improve your organisation verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

What is the KANO-model and why should it be used?

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 21 May 2020 08:30:15 +0000

As known, Lean Management is all about the customer. Your success rate is actually determined by the satisfaction of the customer. This is why you should listen to the so-called Voice-of-the-Customer. If you know which requirements the customer wants you as a company to meet, you can use the KANO-model to do so.

This model was first introduced by Noriako Kano in the ‘80s. The main takeaway of the model is the requirements that the customer would like to see in your product or service. Expectations, priorities and explicit needs are mapped by using the KANO model. This model plots two indicators in a graph. The x-axis is scaled from not filled in to filled in, whereas the y-axis goes from satisfied to unsatisfied (top to bottom). Three needs can be visualised in this graph, using these scalings, namely: basefactors, factors regarding performance and WOW-factors.

Basic Factors

These can simply be described as the basic needs of the customer. If these are not present, the customer is unable to be satisfied. They might be easy to overlook, but you should definitely invest time in them and take these very seriously. To give an example, think about a hotel room. Adding a bed seems obvious, but think about it from another perspective. In the case of forgetting the bad, could a customer still be satisfied?

Performance factors

Unlike the hotel room example, where adding more beds would not increase your customer’s satisfaction, less is not better when talking about performance factors. An example regarding the same example we just used would be the size of the hotel room. The bigger, the better, right?

WOW-factors

This is a special type of factors, considering the satisfaction of a customer will not be influenced when this type of factors is missing. Owing to the fact that these factors are meant to surprise the customer, because he or she did not expect it. Think about leaving a little piece of chocolate on the pillows of the hotel room, for example. In other words, WOW-factors leads to a positive result: increase of the customer satisfaction.

Applying the KANO-model

WOW-factors can turn into performance- or even basefactors over time. A great example would be Wi-Fi in your hotel room. A few years ago, this was a WOW-factor. However, a hotel without Wi-Fi is almost unthinkable nowadays. This means the WOW-factor has turned into a basefactor.

As a company or organisation, you should always focus on the basefactors and make sure these are taken care of. Your performance factors should be a going-on process and WOW-factors should be an extra. This will lead to customers being satisfied over-all, experiencing great service due to performance factors and being surprised once in a while because of your WOW-factors.

KANO-model and Lean projects

But what does the KANO-model have to do with Lean projects, I can hear you think. Lean projects focus entirely on the customer. Focus on obtaining useful input by surveys, interviews or other sources, which in turn can be used to create a KANO-model. The next step is to look for what your customers actually find important and what would be considered a WOW-factor. This can be done by filling in their wishes in your KANO-model and define each one of them as base-, performance- or WOW-factor. But keep in mind there is a difference between wishes and demands. In the example of the hotel, would adding a buffet be a wish or demand?

Het bericht What is the KANO-model and why should it be used? verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Operational Excellence? Here’s what you need to know about it

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 21 May 2020 07:52:35 +0000

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.

Why to apply Ishikawa? Here’s why!

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 10:41:31 +0000

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:

Place the issue on the head of the fish;
Determine the main categories of the possible causes and then
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!

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

Obeya to the rescue!

Jelle Marius — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 13:40:20 +0000

The treasure that is called Obeya

Is the following situation applicable to you? Every meeting, your to-do-list becomes longer and longer. And, although it seems impossible, every new item on that list seems more important than the previous ones. What to do? Obeya might come to your rescue!

What is an ‘Obeya’?

This Japanese word stands for ‘big space’. Sometimes, it is compared to a ‘war room’. Yes, this is a room at a military headquarters. However, this term is used for a room at business headquarters as well. In this room, conferences are held and planning is made. The main aim of Obeya is to offer time and space to solve problems and consult without experiencing organisational thresholds. It must lead to an environment open to collaboration within the company. And if all goes well, Obeya results in faster and more effective solutions to existing problems.

The key feature of Obeya is visual support, such as tables, graphs and other tools to visualize elements of your business. These tools assist to come to a decision during meetings, instead of using opinions and estimations of data. Obeya makes sure every piece of information is analysed, prioritized and because of this, decisions can be made about further actions to take.

What is an Obeya definitely not?

An Obeya is a space, unhidden and accessible to everyone. It is important as well to make sure your Obeya is transparent. There are no secrecies.

The daily meetings your Obeya helds are meant to learn from the past and focus on measures that should be taken because of possible missed opportunities in the past. What should be done to meet the organisational goals? Note that these must be able to find the room! Once again, keep in mind that the Obeya focuses on the future. One rule that always applies is: if you are missing information to take a decision, you are looking at a point of improvement.

Presenting something to the management team, although they are present in the room, is not the aim of the Obeya. Because the team is in the room, one of the risks is that the entire room will focus on them. However, a dialogue between all participants must arise, not only between the management team and other employees.

iObeya (the digital Obeya)

If your company exists of more than one location, iObeya offers the ultimate solution; it is a digital, visualised management platform, which includes the same graphs, tables etc.

There is not one format for your Obeya. Make sure it fits your organisation. To give you some ideas, many organisation choose something like this:

Left side: business values, strategy and plans for the entire year. Think of Hoshin Kanri, X-matrix, OGSM or a map of changes.
Middle: often, this is divided in two parts.
- Left: CPI’s (Critical Process Indicators) and the corresponding results, e.g. dashboard or Balanced Scorecard. Information about the processes is offered as well. It can be seen as a display of the current situation the business is in.
- Right: all improvement projects and their progress are placed here. These plans contain information about the processes. When they are finished, information about them can be found on the left side of the part in the middle.
Right side: possible thresholds and action too small to fit the Kaizen event are put here.

Another option, is to place a flip-over in the room, hang a whiteboard or place a beamer. The choice is all yours.

One look at the Obeya and it must be clear how your company is doing. Green, orange and red must indicate if there are any improvements, or if all is fine. Graphs, progress bars and drawings are easier to read than raw data.

Advantages of Obeya:

Less meetings are scheduled, because meetings to start your day, regular meetings or discussions take place at once.
Information about the current status of the company can be considered known by everybody. This is less time-consuming for managers, because they do not need to inform each and every employee individually.
Everyone is able to see the bigger picture. This may lead to more understanding and willingness to improve.
If employees are able to gain insight in the company, they will feel more involved and responsible.
Collaboration leads to your employees feeling more involved.
Thanks to wisdom of the crowd, new ideas arise and actions are taken earlier on.
Communication will be more direct and faster. This will take less time.

But, how to start using Obeya?

As just stated, there is no strict format to use for an Obeya. Once you have found one that suits your company, hang everything regarding a long term vision. This will contain plans, projects and other information. Do not get scared: obviously, this will include many projects, all encouraging you to fulfill its needs first, because they will all have high priorities. This means the projects are actually equals; which will be done firstly?

Decide a maximum regarding the number of projects your company will deal with at the same time. The rest will be finished later on.

When your first meeting takes place in the Obeya, it is not rare this might take up some time. Everyone has to get used to the way in which the meetings will go from now on. However, the role of the leader of the process is unmissable. He or she is responsible for:

keeping all numbers up-to-date
the progress of the projects

Do not hesitate to become more familiar with the term process.

Concluding, Obeya is the place where meetings take place, plans are made, results are discussed and agreements are made. All important things can be found in the Obeya.

Het bericht Obeya to the rescue! verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.