Six Sigma – Lean Six Sigma Group

Start using Lean now

Jelle Marius — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 18:14:11 +0000

More and more often, employees follow a Lean training because they feel as if it is a necessity and not because their organisation thinks so. It is possible they see tons of possibilities to improve ongoing processes, but they do not know how. And if your organisation is not yet familiar with Lean, where do you start?

Keep it simple

Although it may not seem like it, a working environment is surrounded with problems, shaped as waste. These are activities that take up time and money, but do not add value to the product or service which the customer receives.

Most likely, these types of problems are put on hold, because finding a solution to them can be considered complex. This is most frequently due to hierarchical structures within an organisation. And that is the main reason why it is important to cut up such “big” problems into smaller pieces, so these can be solved step by step. Furthermore, this can be considered to be the first step towards continuous improvement.

Create a foundation

Problems can be everywhere, in every shape or form with many different types of seriousness or priority. In other words, every problem is different from the previous one. The most important concept regarding problems is being transparent and open to your employees, so a foundation open for change is created. To do so, an improvement board might be a great solution. This is where employees themselves are able to write down problems, which will then be discussed at the start of the day or the week (on Monday). This way, employees are encouraged to think about the problems in their own working environment and come up with possible solutions.

Where to start?

It can be difficult to think of the right place to start Lean yourself. However, it is important to keep in mind the workplace is a great place to start. Apply 5S to arrange your workplace more efficiently. One big advantage is how easy to understand 5S is and how fast the result can be visible. It also increases how much your employees are involved in processes within your organisation.

What about the management?

In a very approachable manner, you have shown your colleagues the tip of the iceberg that is called Lean. If they are nearly as enthusiastic as you are, Lean will spread itself. To be fair, starting with Lean is much easier than keeping Lean going. Because how do you keep improving? This is where management is unmissable. They are meant to realise Lean is a strategy for improvement, which is how it should be treated.

Because the philosophy is not a project, solution or short-term replacement: it is a way of thinking, handling and improving where continuous improvement is very important. It is not something you can achieve within a week, but it takes up much more time and energy. The management should commit to the principles of Lean and be able to keep up with the development it brings along. Only when they do so, Lean can be embraced by the entire organisation.

Commitment of the management

The management is meant to choose Lean experts as support. When implementing Lean, employees take on the central role and are encouraged to improve the working environment. Because they are, in fact, experts when it comes to the business processes of an organisation. They know like no other where improvement could be made. The management is responsible, though, for making sure these employees have time to actually make the improvements.

Lean is a philosophy that focuses on customer value by creating a collective mission for employees and management. Shortly, it comprises looking for continuous improvements within business processes by eliminating waste for the customer.

And initiating Lean top-down or bottom-up does not necessarily matter: you need both of these approaches to fully embrace the Lean culture within your organisation and gain success in the long run.

Het bericht Start using Lean now verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Improve your organisation with Business Process Management

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 17:53:52 +0000

Business Process Management

BPM, for short, includes everything that has to do with processes within an organisation. An example would be mapping out and improving processes.

But why would you use Business Process Management?

Processes make sure an organisation keeps its customers satisfied and possibly makes profit. It is important to keep these processes structured and maybe even improve them. BPM is concerned with these tasks.

The four steps of Business Process Management

BPM can be divided in four steps:

Process identification
Mapping processes makes it easier for employees to get an oversight of all tasks and streams within an organisation. This “map” shows all processes and their relations to each other.
Process description
By using a Makigami of een Value Stream Map (VSM) you will start describing these processes that have been mapped out. A SIPOC contributes by determining who is involved in these processes. Which tool you choose, depends on your final goal.
Process analysis
In this phase, you fulfill tasks that lead to the final phase: process optimisation. You will, for example, collect data of systems from which you will conclude something in the next phase. If there is no data that can be trusted, then wait no longer and start measuring.
Process optimisation
There are many ways in which a process can be optimised. Lean provides your organisation with many tools. A well-known tool is looking at processes from the perspectives of seven different types of waste. Determine whether the process adds value for the customer. If not, these can be eliminated. However, sometimes there are processes that do not add value, yet are legally required.

Het bericht Improve your organisation with Business Process Management verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Process analysis using Lean

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:41:42 +0000

Organisations are continuously striving towards a better position than their organisational rivals. They are working on continuous improvement and optimising their business processes. These are focused on improving the quality of a product or service, to create more efficiency regarding the business processes. Process analysis is a part of this process optimisation. But how does Lean help here?

The definition

It is important to focus on what a process actually is. At the beginning of a training, we usually task our participants the same question. It then becomes clear how hard it actually is to define what a process is. There is no clear definition, however we say:

A collection of activities of process steps that are converted into in- and outputs.

Different levels

It is important to distinguish different levels of a process:

Chain level– Process of organisations within the same context;
Business process– The architecture of a business to fulfill the needs of a customer;
Work process– These visualise the way business processes work;
Process step– Give an insight in the tasks that are carried out;
Action/activity – The way a specific tasks or process step is fulfilled;

Map the current situation

To analyse a process, it is important to visualise these. There are many techniques to do so. A well-known technique is the Value Stream Map. This is often carried out by the use of a ‘Brown Paper-session’. In here, details of work processes are mapped out by describing activities and process steps.

The actual process analysis

The analysis of this current, mapped out situation is done to collect data about the goal that is set for an organisation. This goal must be mapped out as well and takes on a futuristic role: what would we want the process to look like? Or more importantly: how should the process work?

After specifying the goal(s), it becomes possible to work towards these. By now, it should become clear which parts of the organisation could use some more attention. A process analysis focuses on identifying possible bottlenecks or waste. Where do these points occur? Are there certain points in the organisation where fails occur or work is not done very efficiently?

Using this process analysis, the quality of products and services can be improved. Possible improvements are mapped out; these can lead to decreases of costs. And in the end this leads to more efficient processes. It gives you the opportunity to view your organisation from ‘the outside’ and be critical. The collaboration between employees is improved as well; they will get a collaborative image of all processes and take their responsibilities to achieve continuous improvement.

Het bericht Process analysis using Lean verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

Implement Monozukuri in your organisation

Jelle Marius — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:21:23 +0000

Monokuzuri

Has your organisation started using Lean? But are you worried this is not going as well as you would like? Then Monozukuri might be your solution!

What is Monozukri?

The term itself is made of the two Japanese words ‘mono’ and ‘zukuri’. These stand for ‘the thing’ and ‘production process’. In other words, Monozukuri does not only focus on the tools of continuous improvement, but on the corresponding culture as well. Not only does this comprise the technique of continuous improvement, but the social aspects too. I mean, it is important to satisfy your employees, right?

Why do trajectories of change fail?

Even though organisation make the decision to implement the philosophy Lean, failure can still occur. In Japan, people wondered why the implementation of World Class Management failed. They concluded there were two streams that actually were not connected and did not strengthen each other. These are called the product value streams and value stream of humans. The product value stream includes the stream of the first phase to the end product. The value stream of humans entails the employees of an organisation.

The streams of the product value stream have split up due to a lack of attention to short-term performances. Employees therefore lost their ownership to improvement. Fortunately, improvement was still made, but not because of intrinsic motivation.

These two streams can, however, still be connected to each other by working together. And when they have met again, continuous improvement will happen again; this is in the organisation’s DNA. This also includes managing your employees, because they should be stimulated!

The execution of big adaptation of projects can only become successful when using the right management system and a Change Management Plan. Monozukuri is an example of such a system, which gives structure to initiatives regarding improvement within companies. By different teams with many functionalities and a focus on the organisation’s goal, this can be achieved. End-to-end costs are improved this way. And this might result in excellerating people and machines in order to achieve maximum value for customers.

Monozukuri’s three pillars

Monozukuri stands on three pillars, each existing of three aspects. These focus on producing the least costly and excellerating continuous improvement.

1. Product & Development

Design-to-Cost
Design-to-cost is a systematic approach to control the costs from design to production. By making certain decisions during the concept phase, it becomes easier to prevent costs in later phases.
Standardisation
Standardising the process, including in- and output, makes it predictable. This leads to quality and creates the opportunity to easily maintain knowledge about products and processes.
“Tier-N-Supplier” Optimisation
By actively involving suppliers in the production process, the number of suppliers in between processes can be decreased. Transparency and teamwork are crucial.

2. Production

Lean manufacturing
Lean strives towards a process containing the least waste and an optimal flow, which adds maximum value to the customer. The employees of organisation using Lean take on a central role, because they are used to generate improvements. Continuously.
Make vs. Buy
The costs and advantages regarding processes of productions of products or services are compared with different companies who make use of the same processes.
Digitalisation
New technologies fasten production processes. This leads to smarter software, robots and sensors.

3. Supply chain

Cost to serve
Cost to serve calculates the costs that are needed for the process of producing to delivering to the customer. Every product regards many activities, due to the fact that every process and every customer differs.
Design to logistics
Design to logistics is a concept where a collaboration between product and development takes place. This way, the costs of distribution are decreased, in order to optimise the customer value.
Tasks
The supply chain makes sure a clear task division is made. However, a clear insight regarding the responsibilities of the organisation for their customers and suppliers is unmissable as well.

Teamwork, however, takes on a central role within these three pillars. Because this does not only make the product value stream successful, but the value stream of humans as well.

Het bericht Implement Monozukuri in your organisation verscheen eerst op 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.

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

How to become a viable organisation?

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 08:23:40 +0000

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 execution of your first improvement project

Jelle Marius — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 07:51:27 +0000

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.

Employees know how processes work. This knowledge is necessary to become able to improve!
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.

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.

Het bericht Customer value according to Lean verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

How Supply Chain Management will support your company

Sebastiaan Kooijman — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 12:03:02 +0000

Lean & Supply Chain Management

Customers, either B2B or B2C, make decisions based on delivery time. One would like this to be as short as possible. They want the stock to be small, because this takes up space and can be very costly. These are the reasons companies become motivated to lessen the lead time. A corresponding discipline is called Supply Chain Management, which we will elaborate on in this blog.

The connection between Lean and Supply Chain Management?

Lead times are linked to stock and the end product. Lack of products can lead to certain delays, which is an unwanted incident to the customer. And he or she will not pay for such services. Supply Chain Management, however, gives a company a system that continuously provides them with stock, purchased at a suitable price and at the right moment.

How can Lean principles be used to support companies this way?

1. Value

Supply Chain Management starts with the customer. What is their demand? Or in other words, which requirements must these products meet? When do they need to be delivered and what is the quantity? As a company, you should know the Voice-of-the-Customer. That should support the entire planning.

However, the main idea of Supply Chain Management regards the fact that every entity within the chain can be considered a customer themselves. This is why it is even more important to make clear agreements with other suppliers. Especially when thinking about these lead times that should be decreased, it is relevant to have a clear image of the competence of your suppliers. It might be possible they can take over part of the production at less costs than you would be able to. This would be time-efficient for you as well.

2. Valuestream

ICT-systems are a bit part of Supply Chain Management. This is sometimes called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). There are actually many possibilities regarding ICT. The main advantage is stock and suppliers are always orderened. The disadvantage, however, it might increase the amount of administrative work.

These ERP-systems are meant to produce more time than it costs. This becomes possible due to overlay between departments. For example, the sales department enters orders that have come in, production makes a planning based on these orders, finances sends out the corresponding invoices and customer support gets insight in the history of orders from specific customers. To conclude, it does still happen sometimes that companies keep up too much administrative work, which has become unnecessary.

3. Flow

Flow can be considered the most important Lean principle when talking about lead time. This actually creates a continuous stream of production. A waiting time might arise when some parts are not present when using Supply Chain Management. You could state that the something went wrong regarding the communication between departments. And this is not that bad! Make sure the entire company learns from these mistakes and keep improving continuously.

Another noticeable mistake in many companies is the fact that employees need to look for things they might need. An example might be chaotic closets. And frequently, these closets do not even strike employees as messy. This happens because there must have been some sort of system before, yet there is not now. Make sure you immediately make a change. This leads to loss of valuable time and possible frustrations, so it does not need to be said this must be solved.

4. Pull

Pull starts at production when a customer has placed an order, not just at any time. This has positive impact on the stock, which thus decreases. Supply Chain Management is an essential here, because it is used as a form of communication between the different departments.

This, however, does mean a company should have a short lead time, because customers will switch companies whenever they would feel like it takes too long to receive their orders. “If you can’t beat them, join them”, might be the best strategy. And let this be the reason why Amazon is as successful as they are. When this company was conducted, it put much more pressure on companies delivering products to customers in the Netherlands.

5. Perfection

Already in possession of a process that works efficiently? Make sure you standardise this process and create clearance for your employees. These processes should always be transparent. If this is the case, there is always room for continuous improvement.

Supply Chain Management and Lean principles come together. They both avoid waiting time, failures, stock, bottlenecks and other frustrations. However, you should stay critical. Keep track of the value stream!

Het bericht How Supply Chain Management will support your company verscheen eerst op Lean Six Sigma Group.

World Class Manufacturing

Reinier Tromp — Thu, 28 May 2020 13:06:55 +0000

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.