Posts Tagged ‘Lean’
Date: 18 May, 2011
Posted by: David Adams in: Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence | Uncategorized
Dude, You Need Innovation! I just Googled (yep, it’s a verb now…) the word “innovation”. As of this date, there were “about” 201,000,000 results. You can discern something about a topic by the number of Google results there are. Innovation is a big deal these days. It may be a simple cloaking device for the real issue: organizations need to drive out cost without driving out people. To me, this sounds like a simple equation for Operational Excellence, at least the KCOE version of it. We aim for mutual trust and respect and the effect is this: costs drop. You win and your team...
Date: 04 Apr, 2011
Posted by: David Adams in: Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence | Uncategorized
Give Those Tired Old Lean Tools a Rest… This is a picture of a process map where the different colors represent information and service (think product) flows as well as value-added or non-value-added steps in the process. If you were a casual observer watching me work with this multi-disciplinary team of engineers, detailers, leaders and craftsmen, you may think, “This guy is doing a Kaizen Event.” But, I’m not. In fact, this is a picture from Week 5 of a Quality Control (QC) Circle meeting. If you ask the team what they are doing, they’d simply reply, “Problem...
Do These Six Things to Improve Your Judgement S0, exercising some poor judgment, I missed last month’s installment in my resolution to write about the 14 leadership traits each month. Last month – February – was Trait Number Two: Judgment. In hopes of catching up, I am offering six practices that – if honed to a skill – will absolutely improve your judgment. One: Go and See for Judgment OK, so I’m not fooling anyone into thinking that these six practices are original. They are right out of the KCOE Operational Excellence System playbook. Now that I’ve...
Broken pdCa Cycles Abound! I’ve been ruminating on this article for a few days now. I am seeing broken pdCA cycles as the root causes for so many problems. I see it here in the Center and in the hospitals and factories where we coach. I thought I’d give my two cents or, rather, two tips, for strengthening your PDCA cycles. PDCA Weaknesses First, be aware of your personal weak areas. Many process problems stem from what I call shunted PDCA cycles. These weak cycles are usually the weakest at the “check” step. The check is either shallow or completely missing. If checking...
Lean Culture Assessment The spider diagram below is the results of KCOE’s Lean Culture Assessment from a company we have been working with since the second quarter of 2009. After implementation and initial alignment of the steering committee, implementation of the balanced scorecard, problem solving I, 5S, suggestion system, and safety system, the scores have changed a bit. Within the next several months we will be performing the second Lean Culture Assessment of the organization. We will share with you the results on our blog and client testimonial page. Interested in KCOE’s...
Operational Excellence Acronyms | KCOE Operational Excellence Acronyms About KCOE | Operational Excellence Acronyms The Kennametal Center for Operational Excellence (KCOE) is a team of expert coaches who, through their own practical experiences and studies, are uniquely qualified to provide high quality, results-driven training and coaching in Operational Excellence (OE). During the course of our training and coaching session the “OE Faithful” begin to know, understand, and use certain operational excellence acronyms. If you’re new to an event it may be helpful to read over...
In the KCOE tradition of semi-humorous parodies, we offer our own tongue-in-cheek version of the twelve days of Christmas. We’d love to hear and see how you sing our new carol: submit your “Twelve Days of Lean Christmas” Video to contact@engagingkcoe.com. We will judge the best video and reward the winning team a $100 gift card to the merchant of their choice. We’ll choose the winner on 03 January 2011. The winner will be chosen based on creativity (not singing ability!). We wish you and your teams and families the very best for this sacred time of year. (sung to...
Note: The following is part of a series written and delivered as a presentation to SMC Business Council’s Manufacturing Group on 05.13.2010. I am sharing it with our blog readers to stimulate a discussion. Feel free to weigh in and give me your comments. I’ll be posting it over the next few weeks to allow time for the discussion to evolve. A special thanks to Tom Henschke, newly appointed President at SMC for the opportunity to share the message. The Premise: Your Lean System Might Stink… In order to produce world-class results, lean or operational excellence must...
Implementing Lean | the “and OE” Problem (the “and Lean” Problem) In order to give us a background for this problem when implementing lean (or operational excellence in our case), I offer the following story, which formed my thinking on this issue. For more background on our assessment of the condition of “Lean” in North America, check out this post. In 2003, one of our regional health care product manufacturers won the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. It was the second time the company had been visited by the audit team. The first time...
One of my former CO OP students came to visit me last night. We had an excellent time catching up. During one part of the discussion, he lamented that his current position often tries his patience. He is a very relationship-oriented person who naturally and easily keeps relationships flowing. So, it strikes him as “odd” that some people don’t relate well to him simply because he is a supervisor. His dilemma is one that is timeless and that is found right where the work is being done: the classic divide between “management” and the “workers”. The dilemma reflects a gap between...
