Sunday, January 19, 2014

Types of Lean Leaders + How to become Lean or The Lean JOURNEY

From the link: http://www.knowlton.org.uk/index.php?id=23

There are three kinds of leaders:
  1. Those that tell you what to do
  2. Those that allow you to do what you want
  3. and Lean leaders that come down to the workplace and help you figure it out. (John Shook)
The Lean Journey:

Here is a much simplified step by step process aimed to help leaders prepare a route map for their Lean journey

STEP 1
Identify a change agent - This must be a leader who will take personal responsibility for the Lean transformation.

STEP 2
Get the Lean knowledge - It’s important to draw from someone who has had practical experience implementing Lean. The internal change agents must master Lean thinking to the point where it becomes second nature.

STEP 3
Find and publicise a crisis - few if any businesses will take the necessary steps to adopt Lean thinking across the board unless they are facing a crisis.

STEP 4
Map the value streams – start with the current state of how material and information flows now, then drawing a Leaner future state of how they should flow and creating an implementation plan with timetable.

STEP 5
Practice Kaizen - begin as soon as possible with an important and visible activity such as a rapid improvement workshop or Kaizen Blitz.

STEP 6
Develop a Lean enterprise - implement Lean techniques as part of a system, not as isolated programs. As soon as Lean momentum is established, expand the scope. Link improvements in the value streams and move beyond the shop floor to office processes.

Useful links / sites about Lean

Lean Enterprise Institute

Check out the link: http://www.lean.org/

TPS and the different types of waste

TPS from the official website

Check out: http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/

Toyota Production System: A production system which is steeped in the philosophy of "the complete elimination of all waste" imbuing all aspects of production in pursuit of the most efficient methods.

Toyota Motor Corporation's vehicle production system is a way of "making things" that is sometimes referred to as a "lean manufacturing system" or a "Just-in-Time (JIT) system," and has come to be well known and studied worldwide.

This production control system has been established based on many years of continuous improvements, with the objective of "making the vehicles ordered by customers in the quickest and most efficient way, in order to deliver the vehicles as quickly as possible."
The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called "jidoka" (which can be loosely translated as "automation with a human touch") which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of "Just-in-Time," in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow.

Based on the basic philosophies of jidoka and Just-in-Time, the TPS can efficiently and quickly produce vehicles of sound quality, one at a time, that fully satisfy customer requirements.

1st Post

This blog is about principles of Operation Management: Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma, Toyota Production System, and so on. Some of the common topics will include:

  • 5Ss
  • Standard Work
  • Process Mapping
  • Streamlining Processes
  • The GE Way / Principles
  • Motorola principles

and so on