Lean Assessments Are Valuable on Your Journey

Anyone who has done a search on Lean Assessments online knows there are dozens of models.  Are they necessary? I would say yes. If you do not know where you are, how do you know where you’re going? Peter Drucker’s famous saying “what gets measured, gets done” is popular because it is true. An assessment is not merely an audit of the current status. It also suggests the wanted position. It creates a strong “expected-to-improve” environment, and it indicates were to go next. Thus, an assessment provides focus for the improvement, fosters attention from management, and creates a desire for good scores throughout the organization.

Leaders often think they understand what needs to be improved; however, that isn’t always true. Most companies use external auditors to perform financial audits and for ISO9000 compliance so why not Lean. Lean has a greater chance of being successfully deployed if it is viewed as strategic and is driven from the top by the CEO who has established a compelling reason to engage in Lean.

Lean Assessments are intended to provide a sense of where your company is at any one time along its lean journey. The assessment helps to investigate, evaluate, and measure key areas of maturity as your organizations progresses along the Lean journey. They are intended to be used as a guide for setting priorities for transformation and improvement efforts.

Because assessments motivate actions, one should not go easy with them. If not designed carefully they drive the wrong behaviors. One should take great care in developing assessments that are helpful for the organization. Blindly copying other firm’s assessments is a dangerous route. What gets measured, gets done, so be sure to measure what you want to be done.

What is your experience with Lean Assessments?  What advice would you give others?

Putting the Pieces Together (of the Lean Implementation Puzzle)

When it comes to implementing Lean there are countless questions about how make it happen and even more about being successful at it. There is no better way to answer those questions then from those who have done it. At this year’s 11^th Annual Northeast Lean Conference presented by the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP) you’ll have a chance to have your questions answered by those who have led Lean Transformations.  The conference titled “Putting the Pieces Together” will be held in Springfield, MA on September 29 -30, 2015.

I am excited to be able to attend the conference this year and learn from respected authorities in the Lean Community like:

Featured Presenters:

Dan Ariens

President, Ariens & Co.

Norman Bodek

Author & President of PCS

Mike Rother

Author of Toyota Kata

Alan Robinson

Author of The Idea Driven Organization

Mark Graban

Author of Lean Hospitals

There is something for everyone with six thoughtfully planned tracks including:

·                  Leadership - Creating a Lean Culture (The Social Side of Lean)

·                  Subject Matter Experts - The Technical Side of Lean

·                  Lean Facilitators & Change Agents - Gaining Buy-In at All Levels

·                  Improvement Kata - Scientific Thinking for Human Development

·                  Applying Lean Principles & Tools in Healthcare

Plus more than 45 presentations about successful Lean transformations by Lean practitioners themselves.

This year also feature three amazing pre-conference workshops:

Kaizen for Healthcare & the Service Industry with Mark Graban

You might think Kaizen is a method used only by manufacturers - but that is no longer true. Many service industries use and benefit from Lean, including healthcare, government, insurance, education, retail and more. A growing number of organizations embrace "daily Kaizen" - the process to facilitate small, meaningful changes -  as an ongoing continuous improvement methodology, fitting within a broader Lean approach and strategy.

The Improvement Kata Experience with Beth Carrington

This course provides a unique mix of theory with a hefty dose of hands-on practice including a deep dive into two fundamental behavior patterns at the core of the TK methodology: the 5-Question Coaching Dialog and Rapid PDCA Cycles. Students will gain direct insight into the power of these methods through repeated personal practice. At the heart of the training experience is a challenge that requires a high level of ingenuity and continuous improvement; on the spot and in real time.

Kata in The Classroom: An Event for Educators with Mike Rother

Kata in the Classroom(KiC) is a hands-on simulation game following the scientific Improvement Kata pattern to establish a goal and then experiment toward it from round to round. The Kata in the Classroom exercise helps teach habits of scientific thinking, takes only 50 minutes and easily fits within a teacher's existing instructional plan.

The North American Shingo Prize recognizes business excellence in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It was established to create increased awareness, development, and implementation of lean manufacturing principles and techniques. The goal of the North American Shingo Prize is to make manufacturing facilities and other industries more competitive in the global marketplace, illustrating how world-class results can be achieved through the implementation of lean principles and techniques in core manufacturing and other business processes.

My dear friends at GBMP are the educational partner of Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is an excellent opportunity for regional manufacturers, as well as other industries. The Northeastern region is comprised of 11 states: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.

If you can I highly recommend you attend the Northeast Lean Conference in Springfield, MA on September 29-30, 2015. It is not too late to join the conference. Register here.

I have attended in the past and found the experience of learning from so many like-minded practitioners invaluable. It promises to be another energizing conference and I look forward to seeing you there.

5S Comprehensive Education and Resource Center

My friend Tony Ferraro, at Creative Safety Supply, has put together a comprehensive 5S resource and education page. Tony has been a frequent contributor on A Lean Journey Blog on many 5S and Lean topics. Many know Creative Safety Supply has been a valued sponsor of this site. This 5S page was made possible with contributions from a number of Lean Bloggers and members of the Lean Six Sigma LinkedIn group.

This site covers a wide range of 5S topics:

• What Is 5S?
• 5S Methodology
• What Does 5S Stand For?
• Five S
• Seiri
• Origin of 5S
• What Is Lean?
• 5 S Lean
• Visual Management
• Visual Workplace
• Lean 5S, Why?
• Employee Involvement
• How to Get Started
• 5S System
• 5S Program
• 5S Training
• 5S Manufacturing
• Common Misconceptions
• Each Step of 5S Defined
• Understanding the Sixth S – Safety
• Tools for 5S

It is full of visuals and videos to make understanding and implementing 5S easier. The content is well thought out and presented in a simple way. You will find this page has everything you need to get started with 5S at your company. I have book marked this page and recommend you do the same.

Lean Math is a New Blog You Should Read

Our good friend Mark Hamel has a new project that I would like to share with you.


The Blog
We would like to announce a new entrant into the lean blogosphere, it’s called Lean Math (leanmath.com).

We know what you’re thinking, “Lean Math?!” Now, that’s a subject that evokes passion in the heart of every lean practitioner…right?

But, the truth is effective lean transformations require some level of math, whether it’s the often deceptively simple takt time calculation, sizing kanbans, calculating process capability, or anything in between. It’s hard to get away from math. There is no such thing as math-free lean and certainly not math-free six sigma!

Lean Math is not intended to be some purely academic study and it does not pretend to be part of the heart and soul of lean principles. Rather, it’s a tool and a construct for thinking. Here we want to integrate lean math theories and examples with experimentation and application. 

The Background

Within the next year, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers will be publishing a book, tentatively entitled, Lean Math. Mark Hamel, author of the Shingo Award-winning book, Kaizen Event Fieldbook and founder of the Gemba Tales^TM blog, and Michael O’Connor, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Dr. Mike) are co-authoring this work. They are also getting a ton (!) of help from Larry Loucka, friend, colleague, and fellow-blogger at Lean Sigma Supply Chain.

Here are some of the first blog posts:

• Time
• Cycle Time
• Square Root Law
• Min/Max Cut Theorem
• Coefficient of Variation

Personally, I am excited about this new addition to the lean blog frontier. I think there is a lot to be learned by Hamel, Loucka, and O'Connor. I hope you visit this new blog and find it useful and enjoyable.  I'd like to hear your feedback.

Kanban Flow - A Free, Fast, & Flexible Kanban Tool

My experimentation with personal kanban systems has been well documented here. I am a fan of using a digital personal kanban board to manage tasks and projects for work, personal, and blog activities. Now there is a new tool to help you be more productive. It is webapp called KanbanFlow.

KanbanFlow is completely free to use, and once you've signed up the 2 minute tutorial will walk you through the process of creating tasks, moving them across your boards, flagging your to-dos with colors, adding and managing subtasks, and even setting up the built-in Pomodoro timer to work with the to-dos you've added. Adding items and managing them is super-easy, and you can set a timer for any to-do on your boards, including subtasks. If you don't want to cram all of your to-dos onto the same board, you can create as many boards as you want to organize all of your activities.

The service allows has a number of great features like like creating as many Kanban boards as you like. Each board can be shared or kept private, individually. So you can use both work related boards and private boards on the same account without problem. You can easily switch between your boards, which is practical if you happen to be involved in several projects on a daily basis.

If you are working with a team, you can invite them to the service to work with you, and you'll be notified when they update your boards. You can instantly see what other people are working on right now, what has been done and what is coming up. 

KanbanFlow is currently in beta, but it's pretty polished and remarkably fast. Your board is easily customize from the Administration menu and it is portable thanks to the internet.

New Webapp - Pomodoro Daisuki is a Simple Kanban Board

I recently reviewed a new webapp call Pomodoro Daisuki on a tip from Jim Benson at Personal Kanban. Pomodoro Daisuki is a chrome app that combines  a simple digital personal kanban board along with the the basic functionality of the pomodoro technique.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management philosophy that aims to provide the user with maximum focus and creative freshness, thereby allowing them to complete projects faster with less mental fatigue.

The process is simple. For every project throughout the day, you budget your time into short increments and take breaks periodically. You work for 25 minutes, then take break for five minutes.

Each 25-minute work period is called a “pomodoro”, named after the Italian word for tomato. Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato as his personal timer, and thus the method’s name.

After four “pomodoros” have passed, (100 minutes of work time with 15 minutes of break time) you then take a 15-20 minute break.

Every time you finish a pomodoro, you mark your progress with an “X”, and note the number of times you had the impulse to procrastinate or switch gears to work on another task for each 25-minute chunk of time.

The Pomodoro techniques isn't for everyone in every situation but it can provide a systematic way to tackle you daily to-do list. Personally it is not for me.

I am a big fan of the personal kanban system as I have written about before so if you are looking for a simple easy to set-up kanban board this may be for you.  It costs nothing so give it a try.  Let us know what you think by leaving a comment here.


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10 Low Cost Ways to Learn Lean

Sometimes I am asked how I learned Lean either from those who want to do the same or by those who want to clarify my experience. I was fortunate to have studied with a Toyota Sensei for a number of years. For anyone who has experienced this kind of teaching it truly is a unique opportunity for learning. I also have a number of Lean certifications for those who like that sort of thing. I don’t want to get into that debate in this article but there is place for certification as part of overall learning.

I thought what I would do is to share 10 low cost ways that you can go about learning more about Lean thinking.

1. Read books. There is an unlimited supply of highly rated books available to help you succeed. I have highlighted a number of notable books on this site. Start your collection today.
2. Company library. Many companies have their own libraries and training that are available for the asking. You could even hold a lunch and learn session where a group gets together to review a book that the group is reading collectively.
3. Go online. Who hasn’t Googled to learn more on a topic? A simple online search will reveal a wide range of online webinars and training courses, many of them free or low-cost. This can be a great way for you to learn at your own pace and when it’s convenient for your schedule.
4. Join a professional association. Industry associations and trade organizations offer a variety of training options, including conferences, seminars, certifications and more. There may be a cost associated with some of this training, and access to some of the resources may require membership. As many of you know I am the VP of Programs for the Northeast Region of AME where I am responsible for these learning workshops.
5. Listen to podcasts. Podcasts are becoming increasingly media savvy learners. They often include product information or interviews with experts in a particular field and tend to cover fairly narrow topics.
6. Read blogs. Online publishers are another great source for information to enhance your skills. I prefer my own blog but I continue to learn some much from other bloggers which I highlight monthly.
7. Attend a webinar. Webinars are another area of increasing popularity for learners due to the flexibility of scheduling and the ease of attendance. Jeff Hajek and I have been offering webinars for about a year now. If you missed any you can see them replayed here.
8. Go to a conference. By attending conferences, trade shows, and workshops you can find quality teachings. Guest speakers entertain, educate and inspire their audiences through motivational and informational presentations. I had a recent talk about Lean Product Development that you may remember.
9. Network. Local groups that share your interest in a particular topic, offer a great forum to learn and share information for little or no cost. Special interest groups within these groups can offer further topic specialization and can be a tremendous way to learn or be mentored. I am an active participant in AME’s northeast region network as well as the Western Mass Lean Network.
10. Learn by doing. Human beings can definitely learn by hearing, reading, watching, seeing, and analyzing…but when it comes to getting results you simply cannot learn better than to learn by DOING. You learn best by doing.

Take advantage of as many of these training approaches as you can, and you will well on your way to learning Lean thinking. Staying current with the newest knowledge and ideas, and acquiring the skills to support it, is a necessity for lifelong learning. Take an hour each day to learn how to be more productive and successful by learning a new skill and applying this new expertise in your business.

Free Online Process Mapping Tool For Value Stream Maps and More

Process maps and the further extension of value stream maps are an extremely powerful tool to visualize your process. I am a big advocate of creating process maps and value stream maps manually.  When you do it manually it establishes an environment where more participation is possible.  This is critically important in the creation of said maps and  the future improvements to be had.

There are times however when it is useful to create electronic maps for education, training, procedures, and standard work visuals for example.  In this case there are a limited number of resources at your disposal.  The options include a wide spectrum from buying eVSM to using free fonts.

A new web application called Diagram.ly allows you to draw any type of diagram and chart online without login or registration free of charge. 

Diagram.ly is offered by a UK based company JGraph, which develops and supports graph visualization software and web services. This web application is self-explanatory and neatly structured to make it easy to rapidly draw what you need. A drag and drop interface is provided to make diagrams by means of clip art and pre-drawn shapes. All diagrams can be saved to your computer in 4 formats – jpg, xml, png, or svg.

I talked to JGraph co-founder David Benson about adding a set of Lean icons to Diagram.ly so that it could create Value Stream Maps.  Here is the outcome. 

I made this quick VSM in 5 minutes to give you an idea of the capability of this tool.  

Diagram.ly gives you a user friendly option to be able to map your processes including making value stream maps from anywhere with internet access.  I believe you will find a number of great opportunities to use this tool to your advantage.  



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