kaizen 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

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

Basic rules to guide your continuous improvement journey

Continuous improvement (CI) or Kaizen is the daily practice of creating small changes using low-cost common-sense solutions. The goal is to deliver customers with high-quality value, on time, and at the lowest possible cost. To stay true to the CI spirit and accomplish its goal, follow these basic rules.

Create improvements with small daily changes.
The team is the source for most of the improvement ideas.
Incremental improvements are typically cost-effective.
Employees take ownership of the daily improvement process.
Constant feedback and reflection.

From the basic rules, the first is to create daily small changes

By definition, in a continuous improvement program, everybody is pursuing perfection through small changes daily. As a result, every day, everybody should be looking for at least one thing to improve or a problem to solve. The reason is that CI is part of everybody’s job. Every day people should be finding a way to correct what is wrong, make a job easier, or eliminate some waste. These tasks require walking the gemba, or the place where value is created, looking for whatever does not add value to the customer. Your objective is to make the process flow, and for that, you need to know your customer needs.

In a continuous improvement environment, management no longer practices command and control. Therefore, leadership does not generate all the ideas anymore. Now they empower their team by involving employees to share their concerns and suggestions. Most importantly, they become part of the problem-solving process. Employees work daily with the company processes and know them better than anybody. For that reason, their feedback is valuable, should be seen as gold.

Let the team drive the improvement process.

Because they know the processes so well, employees’ ideas are simple and effective solutions. In short, they are looking to simplify a process. In other words, they eliminate or combine steps or change the order. This approach combined with Incremental improvements is typically cost-effective. Leadership and engineers many times complicate things, thinking in high-cost technology solutions that require capital expense.

One of the biggest challenges for a supervisor is to make people change the way they do things. Breaking with “that is the way we always have done it” is easier when the idea is coming from them. As a result of involving the team in the daily problem-solving process, they will trust their skills and knowledge more and more. Soon the team will take ownership of the daily improving process.

Continuous improvement needs a strong, transparent, and effective communication system. Therefore, the communication needs to be clear, honest, consistent, and collaborative. Open communication that flows both ways, providing constant feedback and reflection. CI happens within a learning environment where feedback on how things are going and reflecting on the results are as important as clear instructions and expectations.

Follow the continuous improvement basic rules every day, and never stop improving!

Daily & Events CI

What activities are critical to achieving the Kaizen goals?

the foundation for achieving kaizen goals

The focus of kaizen is quality, cost, and delivery. A few activities should take place daily to achieving the kaizen goals. Some of those activities are quality and safety management, cost and logistics management, and processes, products, and materials follow-up. Other daily activities are the major Kaizen activities or pillars which are standardization, 5S, and waste elimination.

Achieving kaizen goals with people’s participation

Kaizen or continuous improvement is a people-based based system. It only works when there is active participation from the employees. If you forget that the people are the heart of the lean-continuous improvement system, all efforts to implement kaizen as part of the culture will be in vain.

The activities mentioned in the first paragraph will be successful only if the company has a solid foundation of employee involvement elements or systems. Those are teamwork, self-discipline, improvement suggestions, morale enhancement, and quality circles.

The foundation

Respect is one of the most important principles of lean. One way to show respect is by taking the time to develop the team’s skills. They deserve to have learning opportunities to learn and practice. Kaizen focuses on hands-on activities rather than classroom instruction. In other words, it is an exercise of learning by doing. Continuous improvement uses a team approach, with people from different departments and organizational levels working together towards a common goal. While working together, they learn new skills and acquire self-discipline together. They also get to know each other as people, gaining an understanding of their differences, and building upon them.

These type of activities increases collaboration, engagement, and morale. When learning and coaching are based on respect and genuine desire to develop the team skills to increase their knowledge and empower them with some decisions, the base or foundation for continuous improvement is solid. Employee involvement activities are critical to achieving improvement goals in the areas of quality, cost, and delivery.

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

Business Performance

How to align Kaizen and business objectives?

When you have specific business improvement goals as part of your Business Plan and strategies, it is easier to identify where you should focus on kaizen activities. But even if you don’t, you can still align your kaizen to your business goals. Let’s take a look at how you would do it under each scenario.

Objectives, Strategies, and Action Plans

As part of the Business Plan, you have goals and objectives. They represent what you want to accomplish. The strategy is the way you choose to achieve those objectives. The plan is what tells you how you are going to do it. In other words, the strategy gives you the framework for decisions, and the action plan tells you the specific actions to achieve each goal.

For example, one of your objectives is to increase sales from x to y. The strategy or way to do it is by growing the business by 10%. Before making decisions, you would ask yourself how it will affect or support your goal. The action plan to achieve this objective is to increase brand awareness or introduce a special sale. These are specific steps that detail how you are going to accomplish the objective.

Kaizen as part of the action plan

Most entrepreneurs analyze the current year’s results and then develop next year’s goals. Achieving those goals means achieving the desired conditions for profitability, delivery, quality, and people. From these statements of intent, you move to develop specific objectives, a clear target, or destination.

The next step to build your business map is to establish a strategy, the way or process to achieve the objective. At this time, you can identify in what department or area this activity will have more impact on the KPI’s. Use this information to create a detailed plan of how to accomplish the target. Now you can incorporate continuous improvement or kaizen events as part of that plan. The kaizen events will help to achieve the objectives. These events will close the gap between the current state and the future state.

Continuous improvement or kaizen is not part of the business plan

When the business plan does not include the improvement plan, you can still align kaizen with it. Under this scenario, your team is dealing with problems without a map to guide their actions with the business goals. Their actions impact productivity, quality, cost, and delivery. Daily kaizen, and events, can help to overcome those challenges by improving the process and solving operational problems. With daily kaizen, your team will tackle many pain points. However, some recurrent issues with high impact in the business deserve a kaizen event.

Before planning your events, understand the problems first. Engage your team in talking to key players and customers to learn about their pain points and needs. The same group can generate ideas for possible kaizen events. After this, validate those ideas to see if they align with the objectives or drive business KPI’s. With a refined list of kaizens, the next step is to prioritize. Do this based on the effort vs. impact or benefits level. After this, you are ready to start planning kaizen.

The critical of kaizen and business objectives

The critical part of both processes is to align kaizen with the business objectives. Maybe, it is easier to start with the target followed by the strategy, plan, and kaizen. But creating a pool of event ideas followed by validation and alignment with the objectives is efficient as well. The critical part of each scenario or method is to choose and target the right KPI’s. Your KPI’s should measure customer satisfaction, quality, delivery, and cost. Let’s keep improving!

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.

CI Basics

Take Baby Steps for Continuous Improvement

How do we learn to walk? The first step is crawling. As the babies become stronger will start pulling themselves up with the support of someone or something. Once they are up will learn balance and how to keep themselves up without any help. The next stage is walking with the mom or dad’s help, learning how to move their legs to take steps. Their curiosity will drive them to use that learning to wander around the house, using the furniture as support. They build confidence in their skills and keep practicing. Those small steps show them how much independence they gain, and they don’t want to lose it. One step at a time, they finally learn to walk.

The business process improvement is very similar. The goal is clear you want to thrive during good times and survive the inevitable challenges and economic downturns. You know that you need to improve your processes to accomplish on-time delivery of quality goods or services at the lowest cost. You want to change but do not have a clear idea of how. Like the baby learning to walk, you need to take small steps, one at a time.

Continuous improvement (CI) or Kaizen is the daily practice of creating small changes using low-cost common-sense solutions. Before you start complaining about the Japanese words, let me explain its origins. The USA Department of War created in the early 40’s a training program named Training Within Industry (TWI). It was developed within the industry to help ramp up the production of war materials and equipment. TWI introduced the concepts of job instruction training and job methods. Job instruction training teaches the “one best way” to do the work, which we now call standard work. Job Methods taught employees how to break down jobs into smaller steps questioning each one as a way to generate improvement ideas. As a result, a high volume of small incremental improvements from individuals was delivered.

After World War II, the American occupation forces brought in experts to Japan to help to rebuild their industry. Edward Deming introduced TWI, and the Japanese love it so much that they give it a Japanese name, Kaizen. Kaizen comes from two words, Kai (change) and Zen (good). It is commonly translated as a change for good or continuous improvement (CI). The strength of CI comes from the participation of workers, of all levels, in the business improving effort. These efforts are driven by three major activities, standardization, 5S, and waste elimination.

By approaching change in small, incremental steps, CI reduces the fear of change. Like the babies learning to walk, the small steps increase your confidence to keep trying until you find success. If you need help on your journey, reach out, I can help!

This article was originally posted by Jina Rivera in Organization and Efficiency Solutions.