HOW DO YOU TRANSFORM A CULTURE?

So you’ve gotten a big client or Senior Leadership position. The company that is hiring you has seen the results of your previous projects, and they want you to start a very large global project (Enterprise Level) on numerous sites. You, of course, say “We can do anything you want.”

Organizations implement technology to support Kaizen for a number of reasons. It provides structure for improvement, allows for active management of projects, forms a repository of knowledge, gives leaders insight into the health of Kaizen, and allows for tracking of results.

People who try to manage Kaizen work in spreadsheets quickly find that they lack the interactive capabilities necessary to spread and sustain improvement.

Use this free download to compare and rank different Kaizen management systems:

Continuous Improvement Software Comparison Matrix

Download this free matrix to:

• See a list of all features and functionality available in improvement platforms
• Calculate a weighted score for each platform based on available features and your organization's unique needs
• Make an educated, intentional choice about which improvement platform is the best fit for your organization

Standard Work is one of the bedrock elements of continuous improvement. In fact, Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, once said, “Without Standard Work, there is no Kaizen [positive change].”

Unfortunately, we’ve seen many organizations create a Standard Work document, check the box, and move on to business as usual.

This does little to stabilize processes or prepare for the next improvement. In order for Standard Work to be effective, it must be widely shared and actively managed.

Looking for a Lean process to enhance your problem-solving abilities? Look no further than A3, a structured approach first used at Toyota. Named for the European paper size to which A3 reports were once confined, this methodology is robust, adaptable, and can be applied to most problems.

At KaiNexus, we recently sat down with Jess Orr, continuous improvement practitioner and founder of Yokoten Learning, to discuss the A3 problem-solving approach and its many applications. You can view the webinar here.

A Deep Dive into A3 Thinking

Presented by Jess Orr

Covering topics including:

• A3 Thinking: A Quick Refresher
• When to Use an A3 vs. Other Tools
• How to Engage Others in the Process
• Change Management 101
• The Hardest Part: Sustaining the Gains

Here are the highlights of the webinar:

If you’ve decided to invest in technology to support your Lean construction efforts, congratulations. Giving your team the right tools for the job is always a smart move.

Picking the system that’s going to help you complete more opportunities for improvement, sustain those improvements, and calculate the impact of Lean is an important job. Most people have little experience selecting software of this type, so it can be a little daunting.

Fortunately, there are some easy ways to separate the solutions you should consider from those that will be of little value.

We’ve put together a series of questions that will help guide your selection process.

We get the chance to talk to leaders implementing the Kaizen approach to continuous improvement on a regular basis. One of the questions people who are new to the Kaizen way often ask is, “Should I do daily Kaizen or Kaizen events?”

The short answer is, “Yes.”

Daily Kaizen is essential for tackling small problems before they become big ones and for sustaining improvements that have been implemented. Making continuous improvement part of everyone’s job forms the basis of Kaizen culture.

However, some challenges require a more focused approach. Kaizen events require a significant investment of human capital. The team puts their other work aside for three to five days to focus on the target process or problem. That’s not trivial, so Kaizen events aren’t always the right tool for the job. But here are some situations where they make perfect sense.  

Gemba walks are a valuable tool for anyone interested in continuous improvement and spreading a culture of improvement across the organization. Leaders visit the place where work gets done, observe, ask questions, and show respect. Following the walk, an improvement cycle might be started based on analysis of what was observed.

It’s actually pretty simple, but the simple things can be the most difficult to execute effectively.

Here are a few tips for getting the most out of your next Gemba walk.

Kaizen boards are a fantastic addition to any improvement program. They arrange information visually so that a quick glance provides useful information about the progress of improvement projects. They are popular in every industry from healthcare to construction. In terms of implementing a Kaizen board, there are really two choices. A physical board that hangs on a wall in or near the workspace or an electronic Kaizen board that can be accessed from computers or mobile phones.

While paper boards make nice artifacts, there are a bunch of things that only their digital counterparts can do.

Here are our top 10.

The continuous improvement approach to business is based on a few core principles; focus on the customer, identify and understand how the work gets done, manage and smooth the process flow, remove non-value-added steps and waste, manage by fact and reduce variation, involve and equip the people in the process, and undertake improvement activity in a systematic way.

A piece of cake, right?

In reality, buying into the ideas behind the business methodology is the easy part. Executing them in the real world is much more challenging. Fortunately, there are a number of continuous quality improvement tools (CQI tools) to help put these principles into action.

If you’ve read this blog before or poked around our website a bit, you know that our continuous improvement software solution includes digital Kanban boards. For that reason, you may think it is odd that we’ve written a post that includes discussion about the downside of the very tool we provide.

But Kanban software is like about everything else in life; you weigh the advantages and disadvantages and go with the approach that comes in on top. Then you try to minimize the problems as much as possible.

We think the benefits of electronic Kanban boards far outweigh the challenges, but we think it’s right to lay both on the table.