kaizen event Archives - Better Process Solutions

What are the characteristics of a kaizen facilitator?

Kaizen events are an integral part of the continuous improvement culture. The success of those events depends on many factors, such as the characteristics of the kaizen facilitator. This person is responsible for leading the event, among other things. Experience leading events and continuous improvement knowledge are not the only characteristics that a facilitator needs. What are the characteristics of a kaizen facilitator?

Characteristics of a kaizen facilitator

Whether you are looking to hire or contract, the following are most haves’ characteristics. The facilitator must be courageous. In other words, a person who is comfortable having difficult conversations and asking tough questions. While being brave in the name of the event’s success, a coach is respectful and supportive.

Whether you are looking to hire or contract, the following are most have characteristics. The facilitator must be courageous. In other words, a person who is comfortable having difficult conversations and asking tough questions. While being brave, a coach is respectful and supportive.

Communication is another soft skill that is critical for success. The ability to convey information in a clear, simple, and concise way. A person who practices active listening and can do so with people of different levels in the organization or levels of education. If they cannot explain something in simple words, it will not translate knowledge effectively. Explain something complicated without too many technical words is an elusive skill for many.

Emotional intelligence skills are another characteristic of a kaizen facilitator

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence recognize and understand their feelings and how they can affect other people. The emotionally intelligent person is skilled in four areas: identifying emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions.

A facilitator must motivate, make others feel comfortable, overcome challenges, and manage conflict. Therefore, the ability to understand and manage their emotions to influence others in positive ways is critical. Social skills such as interpersonal relationships with empathy, compassion, and humility are essential for this job. With them, the facilitator will be coaching others to learn and be their best self.

For instance, understanding human psychology and change management are key to influence people and drive a successful event. An honest and trustworthy individual who gives people credit for their ideas will navigate through the challenges of the event with greater chances of success.

A facilitator must have technical skills

A continuous improvement facilitator without technical skills and lean knowledge is not a good bet. Knowledge about continuous improvement and proven practical experience is non-negotiable. Moreover, problem-solving, time management, organization skills, and team building are also crucial. An energetic and passionate about continuous improvement person is the ideal driver for the cultural transformation from traditional to continuous improvement, one kaizen at a time.

Daily & Events CI

Facilitators, their role in a kaizen event

A kaizen facilitator has various tasks to complete, for example keep the team focus, engaged, and energized.

Various roles are critical for a successful continuous improvement event. One of those roles is the event facilitator. He or she is responsible for leading the event, but that is not the only responsibility.

What are the responsibilities of the facilitator?

Most of the time, the facilitator is also the kaizen or continuous improvement event planner. As an event planner, they organize and prepare all the activities related to the event. For instance, the facilitator works with the event leaders to establish the scope of the event and develop the charter. Also, they identify and gather resources and materials while keeping everything under budget.

During the event, the facilitator has a couple of responsibilities that can make or break the activity. A CI event requires a good coach that guides the team by asking questions. Through these questions, he or she helps the team to see and approach problems using lean thinking. In other words, participants learn lean thinking by doing it.

While executing the different steps of the event, the use of CI tools is common. Because not all team members know those tools, they learned them from the teacher or facilitator. This means that during the event, they develop team skills.

Keep the team motivated

Unfortunately, not everything always goes as planned. Sometimes, participants do not show interest or lose focus during the event. When that happens, it is time to put on a different hat. This time the facilitator will act as a motivator and cheerleader. Accepting change is never easy. Therefore, people need to understand the purpose of the event. Furthermore, why they are participating in the event and what is in there for them.

Even when event participants know those things, keeping them motivated and engage in the activities is a tall order. A good facilitator will take time to learn about their audience before the action starts. Knowing ahead how they learn better and their learning type will go a long way to keep them motivated.

Some parts of a continuous improvement or kaizen event can be bored. Not everybody enjoys sitting in a room for hours or analyze information. The facilitator needs to work hard to keep those individuals engaged and energized. A way to do this is to acknowledge those challenges and the accomplishment of milestones during the activity. Celebrate those accomplishments as all small wins. Keep the audience active by incorporating exercises and having them assisting you in some parts. For example, participants can help as scribers.

Facilitators also manage conflict

Another situation that is inevitable when we are dealing with change is conflict. Some people will be more open than others to accept change or participate in activities that lead to change the status quo. Those groups may disagree on the causes or solutions. When that happens, the facilitator acts as a mediator to help those groups to reach a consensus.

There are a few other things that can cause some trouble. For instance, when technology fails, it must pivot and adjust the training to the new circumstances. The same happens when the original training plan is not working.

Help the team succeed is the most important job of the facilitator

The event facilitator’s most important job is to help the team succeed. Teaching and coaching while focusing on the kaizen’s objective is a critical part of that job. Also, to remove any obstacles to learning and keep the group energized. Motivate and show respect by focusing your attention on whoever is sharing an idea or commenting on a subject. Celebrate small wins and praise teamwork and collaboration. In other words, create a positive and safe environment that invites people to participate and be the best they can be!

Daily & Events CI

What are the key roles for successful kaizen?

Planning and executing a continuous improvement event is a team activity. The team participating in the event is vital for its success. But there are other equally critical key roles. These roles are executive sponsor, value-stream manager, facilitator, event coordinator, and team-leader. Let’s see the responsibilities of each one.

Key roles for direction and support

The executive sponsor is typically a C-suite leader, vice-president, senior leader, general manager, or plant manager. His/her job is to provide direction and support to the event. For instance, the sponsor will talk at the beginning of the event to clarify that a successful activity is necessary for company performance. Moreover, the achievements of this type of exercise will not risk anyone’s job.

Frequently, the value-stream manager is a vice-president, director, or middle manager. It is someone that has the authority to approve policy-related changes. In addition, he or she has the power to approve improvements that can impact regulatory, financial, safety, or a critical process. The value-stream manager works with the event coordinator and participates in the planning and preparation stages. Another duty is to communicate complete support to the event and the team. Above all, should be present during the event ready to answer questions and remove barriers.

Key roles for planning

The event coordinator is responsible for the logistics of the event. For example, coordinate the event date(s), reserve the room, and send out invitations. Another task is to ensure that all necessary equipment and materials are available. The coordinator is part of the team whose responsibility is to identify the best team members. The other people responsible for this task are the value-stream manager and the HR manager.

Event Execution Roles

The facilitator is responsible for leading the event. Sometimes, the event coordinator and the facilitator are the same people. This situation is typical when the company has a seasoned staff in CI matters. The facilitator participates in planning, team selection, and event logistics. Also, it is part of the follow-up and post-event reflection.

In general, the team leader is the team member with the most knowledge in the process. This position may not be necessary if the event is led by an internal facilitator. But, if the facilitator is a consultant or external resource, the team leader is an advisor. The facilitator will ask this person for advice or help when needed.

External help for your kaizen event

If you are starting and have never done an event, you may want to hire an outside professional as your facilitator. The objective of a good external facilitator is to help you to become a skilled facilitator and coordinator. A good consultant will work with all the key roles in the planning, event execution, implementation, and follow-up of the event. He or she will teach each member how to fulfill their role successfully. Also, will let all key roles member to do their tasks while coaching them.

Are you ready for your first continuous improvement event? If you have doubts or need help to start your improvement journey, call Better Process Solutions. We can help!

Daily & Events CI

8 Steps for a Continuous Improvement Event

Steps for a continuous improvement event and PDCA

Previously I mentioned that PDCA is a good tool to standardize the kaizen event. Today I will show you the general steps to do a kaizen event and how to use PDCA. There are 8 steps for a continuous improvement event plan and execution.

Understand the problem
Plan the event
Learn about the current state
Design and test the new process
Validate the results against objectives
Modify the process if necessary
Once we achieved results, standardize, train, and communicate
Make further improvements, start over.

Plan the Event

We learn before that the planning step is critical for problem-solving. Certainly, it is because, during that step, you are defining the problem. In other words, you are studying the problem to understand in detail what is happening. This includes finding the root cause of the situation.

In a continuous improvement or kaizen event, you start by understanding the problem or situation. Describe the current state as detailed as possible. Use the process name and its description, and the affected KPI’s for this description.

To plan the event, identify all the key information to make the event a success. This information includes the scope, objectives, expected deliverables, team members with their roles, event dates, and location.

Getting to know the current situation

The third step is to learn about the current state. It consists of drawing a picture of the process as is. For this, you need to know the process, the first and last step, steps sequence, and standards. You also need to know what are the customer’s needs. The golden rule to fix problems is to go where the value is created, observe, measure, and ask questions respectfully. Identify waste, where the flow stops, safety hazards or risks, and quality concerns. The most important part of the PDCA cycle is understanding the problem. While doing kaizen, it is critical to understand the process, including the root cause of the problems identified.

Create a new process and test if it works

Equipped with this information, you are ready to start designing the new process. Brainstorm possible solutions with the team. The target is to eliminate waste, improve quality, or reduce the cycle time. Prioritize and refine the list by selecting those ideas that are expected to have a bigger impact. The team should be able to complete the tasks during the allotted time frame.

Test the ideas, simulating the conditions of the new process. Measure the results and note the effect of the new method. Analyze the results vs. the objectives, and validate if the process can achieve them. Modify the process if you need and keep testing and measuring as many times as it is necessary. This step represents another PDCA loop by itself.

Validate the new process

The kaizen step equivalent to Check is to validate the effectiveness of the new process. The event is scheduled for one week or less, but sometimes you will have pending items that need to be finished later. This step includes follow-up on the completion of those items. It also includes a revision of the results to determine if the kaizen achieved its objectives. Normally, this follow-up process happens 30 days after the completion of the event. Similar to what happens in the previous step, if the new process falls short of the objectives, you follow PDCA to modify, measure, and adapt until the desired condition is reached.

Steps for a continuous improvement event – The last one, reflect upon the results

The last step in the kaizen event is to evaluate the performance of the process. Process monitoring should be part of the daily operation as well as discussion of gaps between standards and current results. Daily kaizen should address problems in quality, safety, or delivery performance. Remember, once the improved standard is stabilized, it is time to start the improvement process again.

Daily & Events CI

10 Rules to practicing continuous improvement

While doing kaizen, obviously you are seeking to improve a process, but if you are focusing on the results, your heart is in the wrong place. Continuous Improvement heart is the people; therefore, you should focus on their learning experience rather than the savings or productivity gain. What are the ground rules for practicing continuous improvement?

Ground rules for practicing continuous improvement

When I facilitate kaizen events, I like to be clear about the expectations. A number of those expectations are directed to leadership because, as stated before, they need to learn and model the new behaviors. Kaizen is a learning activity, where curiosity, creativity, and the desire to learn and do new things are the main ingredients for success. The following are ten ground rules for practicing continuous improvement.

Practice Respect at all times, respect the people and their ideas, one person speaking at a time, listen to what others have to say, be on time, no finger-pointing, there are no bad ideas.
Tune your mind to a new channel: Lean Thinking.
Keep an open mind, be curious, ask Why, What if, How could we?
Challenge the status quo, ask Why five times, and find the root cause.
No excuses! Think Yes, we can do it if _____.
Look for low-cost, rapid, and simple solutions.
It is ok (and encouraged) to disagree, but it is not ok to be disrespectful.
The meeting room is a safe zone where there are no titles, all ideas and opinions have the same value, and it is ok, to be honest.
Correct what you see wrong, but there is no need to be perfect!
Win or learn, here you do not lose!

Additional key notes

These rules exist to ensure the right environment to encourage participation exists. Kaizen is not classroom training; it is learning by doing. Create the environment to drive fear out of the door and let in creativity and curiosity. Every team member deserves to have the opportunity to learn and be part of the activities that will change their work environment and processes.

Culture Transformation Journey

Kaizen and Employee Involvement.

The three pillars of kaizen, standardization, 5S, and elimination of waste, are critical to achieving the goals. These activities are successful only if the foundation, employee involvement is robust. The employee involvement activities are teamwork, self-discipline, moral enhancement, improvement suggestions, and quality circles. From them, the last two provide information on how active employees are in continuous improvement activities.

Suggestion Programs to increase employee involvement

The purpose of this system is to motivate the employees to provide as many suggestions as possible. One of the management’s responsibilities is to share with their teams the company goals. Another responsibility is to educate them on how their daily work connects to those goals. If they accomplish those tasks, the team will understand how they can support those goals. Therefore, they will suggest things aligned with those objectives.

The suggestion program should be easy to participate in, have clear rules and standards. Forms containing all the required information and acceptance criteria are an example. Also, other ways to facilitate participation are guidelines for prioritization and how to provide feedback. Other areas to cover with simple procedures are ways to motivate participation, decision-making, program promotion, and recognition.

Quality Circles

Quality circles are activities designed to address quality, safety, cost, and productivity issues. They are informal and formed by voluntary small-groups. You know your employees are engaged in continuous improvement when they suggest solutions. Another hint comes when they ask to meet with other teammates to work on an idea.

The idea can be part of the possible countermeasures of kaizen in progress. Another possibility is a simple checklist to minimize errors or to create visual marks to improve a process. Management support for these groups is vital. They can help to remove obstacles and facilitate resources and training. Also, they oversee what is going on to ensure meeting policies and critical criteria.

The temperature of employee involvement

These systems or activities are excellent ways to take the temperature of the continuous improvement effort. The more participation, the more active and engage the employees are. They are also excellent vehicles to boost the employee’s morale, which is another daily activity to ensure kaizen success. It is very important to practice respect for the people, respect their ideas, and always provide feedback. The main idea behind all these is to develop your people, to provide the environment to explore, learn, and change.

Daily & Events CI

8 Steps for a Continuous Improvement Event

Steps for a continuous improvement event and PDCA

Understand the problem
Plan the event
Learn about the current state
Design and test the new process
Validate the results against objectives
Modify the process if necessary
Once we achieved results, standardize, train, and communicate
Make further improvements, start over.

Plan the Event

Getting to know the current situation

Create a new process and test if it works

Validate the new process

Steps for a continuous improvement event – The last one, reflect upon the results

Tools

What is Kaizen? What is a Kaizen Event?

Continuous improvement (CI) or Kaizen is the daily practice of creating small changes using low-cost common-sense solutions. In my post, Take Baby Steps for Continuous Improvement, there is a little history of how Kaizen was born. Continuous improvement involves everyone in the organization, improving processes everywhere, every day.

The goal of kaizen or continuous improvement

The goal of lean is to deliver to the customer the highest quality, at the shortest lead time, at the lowest possible cost. Hence, kaizen’s focus is quality, cost, and delivery. For that reason, its major activities are 5S, standardization, and waste elimination. Daily execution of these three activities drives incremental improvement that brings dramatic results over time.

Daily and events

CI every day is important to tackle small problems before they become big ones. The inspiration comes from observation of frequent deviations from the standard, or ideas to improve the process. However, sometimes we have challenges that require a more methodical approach. When that happens, an event is more convenient. Recurrent problems that affect productivity or KPI performance are good candidates for an event.

A CI or Kaizen event is focused on one problem or improvement idea at a time. The goal is to accomplish dramatic improvements in a 2-7 days period. These are rapid events, short, and based on common-sense solutions with very low or no-cost at all. The understanding of the problem and kaizen planning is critical for success. It is also important to standardize the way of performing kaizen, everybody should follow the same steps and document the execution of those steps in the same way. A good method to ensure the problem-solving activity is standardize is using PDCA.

When it is done correctly, kaizen not only improve quality, cost, and delivery. It also helps the heart of the lean system, the people. It does so by eliminating safety hazards, simplifying processes, and teaching people how to identify opportunities, and improve their processes. In my next post, I will discuss the general steps to perform a kaizen event.