As part of our efforts to share valuable Lean practices with our readers, we've created a series of education videos. Each video covers an improvement principle in 2-3 minutes, providing you with a quick nugget of best practice information. Don't forget to share with your staff and colleagues!

In this video:

We often get asked "What’s the benefit of using KaiNexus if my manager is right here and we can solve the problem right away?" First off, know that we want you to talk. KaiNexus is meant to enhance face to face communication by making it easier to communicate with every single person in the organization, no matter where they are or when they work. It’s definitely not intended to discourage face to face communication. Interestingly, we often notice the opposite occurs; people find that using KaiNexus to manage improvement actually makes it easier to include everyone in the whole improvement process, which often leads to more face to face discussion. So even if much of your brainstorming and problem solving communication occurs offline, it’s still helpful to log your opportunities for improvement in the KaiNexus system.

So why is that?

First, organizations often have short term memories. If someone asks “why are we doing it this way?”, people can look in KaiNexus to see what the underlying problem or opportunity was when the idea was implemented.

Second, using KaiNexus helps share and spread ideas, so people in other parts of the org can find them through the search function. This means your good ideas can more easily help others, and if you work in an organization with multiple locations, it’s likely that people everywhere are facing the same problems. KaiNexus helps you collaborate so you can all improve more effectively.

Third, using KaiNexus makes it easier to communicate and disseminate your opportunity for improvement and ideas that are being implemented, making sure people inside and outside your work area are being notified and are staying on the same page.

Finally, putting opportunities for improvement in KaiNexus keeps a nice record of improvement work, which allows your department and your larger organization to tally the overall number of improvements, as well as capture data about the types of improvements that are being made such as the number that impact safety or satisfaction, as well as overall time and cost savings. This can be really helpful to quality departments or executive teams.

KaiNexus is meant to include everyone in the process and to track and spread improvement, leading to a more effective improvement process.

Watch more videos from the KaiNexus Education Video series.

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