Tag: continuous improvement journey

Daily & Events CI

Lean champions, who are they?

Every activity, movement, or new initiative needs advocates, people that support and promote the cause.  Continuous improvement or lean is not the exception.  The journey to transform the company will be easier if you have lean champions in your team.

Why you need them?

As we plan the continuous improvement rollout, we spend a lot of time on how to earn the trust of our employees.  During previous years, most of the staff changed.  At the time the plant changed its business operation model, many people retired.  For that reason, we hired new supervisors and managers.   The concern of the most senior members of the staff was that people could have trust issues.

Accept changes is never easy, especially when you tell people with an average of 22 years on the job that they will learn new ways to do it.  Knowing all the changes from the previous year, how could they trust that we were not trying to fire people?  Our lean coach suggested identifying team members known for being natural leaders to help.  People feel at ease with trusted leaders.  Therefore, they come into the conversation with less apprehension.  An advocate that is considered trustworthy by the team is the best way to gain their attention.

What are lean champions?

A lean champion is an advocate for the continuous improvement journey.  He or she knows the tools and helps others to use them.  Moreover, they promote lean thinking not only with words but with their actions.  In general, they will work closely with their coworkers to identify areas for improvement.  Also, they will guide and support the implementation of improvement ideas.  Most of the time, champions know the process very well and have experience in different functions.  That experience helps them to ask the right questions and guide their coworkers to learn.  However, it is not critical to be a subject matter expert.  

This group is more than promoters for the lean cause.  They will assist in continuous improvement events or even facilitate them.  Of course, they will need a coach to learn the ropes of the trade before going solo.

Lean champions may have different levels of experience, education, and qualifications.  People with previous continuous improvement experience are candidates to be champions.   However, not having experience in lean is not a deterrent to being a champion.  After all, continuous improvement is not about using tools but about the people and their learning experience.  For that reason, there are some characteristics or traits that have more weight than knowing the tools.

What are the characteristics of the lean champions?

Attitude and communication skills are among the most meaningful characteristics of members of this group.  They are positive people with the ability to adapt, avid learners, and enjoy helping others. Their communication skills are above average.  They can express ideas and simply and clearly.  Also, they can adapt their communication to different audiences. 

Honesty, integrity, consistency, and empathy are critical character traits for members of this group. Champions do what they say and have no problem admitting they don’t know something.  Of course, they have a strong will to succeed.  But also, they can cope with challenges and setbacks.  The ability to step back for a second to see the big picture and reflection as a learning tool is part of their skills.  

Lean champions don’t need to have any leadership positions.  The best I worked with were team members with a strong desire to learn and contribute to the company’s success.  Also, they have their egos under control and value the power of teamwork and collaboration.  These people don’t look to be in the spotlight at all times, although they feel comfortable doing it.

Culture Transformation Journey

Basic concepts to support the improvements

Three basic concepts that leaders need to learn

To successfully overcome each challenge presented to us, we need to know certain basic concepts. For continuous improvement, there are three concepts that management should learn and teach to their team. They are, put quality first, the next process is the customer, and speak with data.

The basic concepts and the Customer

The CI goal is to deliver the customer the highest product or service quality, at the lowest possible cost, in the shortest lead time.  Therefore, the focus of all our decisions is quality, cost, and delivery.  

How do you keep the focus? How can you guide others to keep the focus? There are several changes in how we work as managers that have to change. None of them represents a new management style. However, many entrepreneurs keep doing the same thing since they learn the ropes of the trade and ignore these three ideas.

Put Quality First

Quality should be the highest priority over cost and delivery but, that is not common practice. Throughout my career, I have seen plenty of examples where quality is put to second or third place while making decisions.  The worst part is that the reason cited to do so was to give the customer what they want at the time they wanted it.  Really?  Is that the reason or that production planning does not want to fall behind on their attainment metrics?  Or to avoid the inspection cost?  Or maybe to evade having a difficult conversation with the customer?

Practicing quality first requires commitment from management.  Alignment within the organization is critical to ensure that the customer receives a high product or service quality.  When the entire management team makes decisions based on this and model this behavior all the time, the employees will understand that quality is more important than quantity or delivery and will act accordingly.

Quality is not only for the product, information, or service the external customer will receive.  It also applies to the quality of the internal processes.  With CI you are seeking to improve the processes with small daily changes, everywhere by everybody.  You go see the process, walk the process, and understand the process to identify ways to improve it and minimize all types of waste.  After improvements, you either change or create standard work for that particular process.  In other words, your focus to improving process quality is the process itself, not the results of the process.

The Next Process is the Customer

Although we all know that every process has a supplier and a customer, every time we talk about customers most people’s mind goes immediately to external customers.  Every member of the team should know two things, what is their role in providing the customer the value they expected and that the next process is their immediate customer.  It is management responsibility to provide this information to their team.

Knowing their role within the company strategies, including customer and quality give them the understanding of how their actions affect the value stream.  It is also a way to present them why their work is important.  How they contribute to ensure that the company achieves its goals, by producing a good quality job or service to the next process, which is their customer.

Speak with Data

While many people like to use their experience or gut feelings to make decisions, within a CI environment you speak with data.  Tools like huddle meetings, war rooms, 5S and visual management use data to tell what is going on.  Visual data presented clearly and simply is important for clear and effective communication as well as alignment with company goals.

Continuous improvement uses PDCA as a structured way to solve problems.  If you recall, the first step, Plan requires to define the problem or situation you want to fix.  To define it you need to collect all pertinent data, no gut feelings or believes but clear, accurate data.

Summary

To support your continuous improvement journey, three basic thoughts should be part of your daily though process, put quality first, the next process is the customer and speak with data.  For some people, these thoughts require a mindset change, and for others just a little tweak.  A continuous improvement culture is about exploring new ways to do what we do, learn, and adjust or change.  These concepts are another step on your CI journey.