Sustaining Improvement

Hello Lean Nation;

Sorry I have not been able to keep up with my blogging recently. I am under contract to deliver a book and I have been putting my blogging time into writing the manuscript. I'll give you more details in the upcoming months.

This week I had a chance to speak at the Emergency Department Administrator's Conference in downtown Toronto. The topic was sustaining improvement. Sustaining is all about management. It has nothing to do with concepts and technology. It is about persistence, consistency and tenacity. Refuse to fail!

Before you can sustain, you must improve. Before you improve, you must stabilize your organization. Stability begins with visual management. We have discussed some of the concepts of visual management in earlier blogs. An organization should stabilize Manpower, Methods, Machinery/Equipment, and Materials. Until you get to some basic standards of operation and consistency in these areas, improvement will be difficult.

Assuming you have stabilized the organization, you can now deploy your lean techniques to deliver improvement. Implement Flow and Pull in all of your work areas. Strive for zero defects, and manage the results visually. Finally adapt a culture of kaizen. Get better everyday!

Some of the common lean approaches to sustaining improvement include Gemba Walks, leadership standard work, and kamishibai(audit).

When you get to a point where you have standard work, good 5S, and visual management of both process and results, you can actually improve a small amount each and every day.

Imagine an environment where every day you leave the work place better than when you arrived. That would be special indeed. This concept is known as managing for daily improvement, or MDI.

Now go and change the world, one team at a time!

Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw
www.breakthroughhorizons.com