How ‘Deep’ is Lean? (All the way to Business Growth!)
You can’t get to Quality until you ‘wade through’ Efficiency. Where do you start? ‘Variation’ forces the Continuous Improvement ‘leader’ to focus on efficiency ‘First’ because the CI leader knows you’ll ‘spin your wheels’ if you jump into the quality issue first. Why is that? (You don’t know if the Quality problem is truly the issue or the variation will go away once the efficiency issue is improved.)
With every word, another explanation is required. i.e. Improved vs Resolved. Efficiency is a ‘moving target’ it is never ‘Resolved’. Today efficiency is good and tomorrow the situation has ‘slid back’ into the quagmire of the human interface. Fact: Efficiency must be continually monitored. (What gets measured gets improved!). So, how do you improve efficiency? That is where ‘Training’ comes into play. Believe it or not, the CI leader will not be able to improve efficiency by themselves. It is the Team (Department, Division, Company….) that will Succeed or Fail together.
The ‘Big Seven’ areas for Efficiency Focus: Over Production, Un-necessary Inventory, Waiting, Motion (Un-necessary/Excess Motion), Over-Processing, Transportation, and Rework (Defects)! Lean Six Sigma training equals more ‘eyes’ on the system. (Team Effort). A VSM (Value Stream Map) focus allows for an ‘orderly’ approach to breaking the revenue stream into process steps…. Kaizen Sprints allow a ‘Timed Focus’ and a ‘Team Effort’ to improve the situation. Securing increased efficiency minimizes the variation equation. At this time, Key Characteristic statistical data can be ‘mined’ to give a better view of where solutions to Quality issues might exist. And, of course, improved Efficiency and Quality lead to Innovation (more time to ‘Think about Product Development’ rather than ‘Putting out the Fire’ on recurring issues.) which leads to BUSINESS GROWTH!
Todd Adams
OBR Optimization Engineering: Lean Six Sigma CI, ERP Software Development, Quality Systems Enhancement, Business Process Improvement, CI Project Work. www.OBREngineering.com; POC: Todd Adams, Todd.Adams@OBREngineering.com; (424) 241-0290.
As the Famous Sales Guru Grant Cardone says, 10X your OBSESSION!
