The Roadmap to Organizational Excellence- Part 4 of 7

Lean Nation:

(Part 4 of 7) I am continuing to blog on a seven part series on how to create a world class organization. As a reminder, here are the steps to creating a culture of continuous improvement:

1. Find a Sensei - You need a coach to make the journey.
2. Select your Organizational Wide outcome measures - these are known as the True North measures.
3. Prioritize and Map your Value Streams - select the areas with the most leverage.
4. Deliver Improvement - Use A-3 thinking and lean principles to make the changes identified in your value stream mapping sessions.
5. Sustain your improvements using visual management and leadership standard work.
results are only realized if the gains are held.
6. Support your improvements with ongoing training and leadership development.
7. Spread your improvements to other parts of your organization.

This week I will expand on step 4: Deliver Improvement.  This step is where most organizations want to begin.  Skip the step of finding an improvement coach,  skip the high level aims,  and skip the planning. Jump right into the tools and go make magic happen.

Working from the premise that you have completed the three prior steps, you have now earned the right to improve.  Following the plans from your value stream analysis, improvement consists of scoping a portion of a value stream and using lean thinking to re-design or design that area.  As a refresher the principles of lean include:

• flow
• pull
• defect free
• visual management
• kaizen

Work that is based on the collection of these principles is known as lean thinking.

You will want to provide lean thinking using the scientific method.  Improvement is not a series of just go and do stuff. You will want to follow the Plan-Do-Check- and Act cycle to prepare for the change, develop a solution, implement the solution, measure the results, and sustain the solution.

A tool that lean organizations use to follow the PDCA cycle and ensure the scientific method is followed is the A-3.  The A-3 is a size of a sheet of paper and also a format and report of the scientific method.    The steps in A-3 thinking include the following:

1. Define the reason for action
2. Identify (quantify) current conditions
3. Document target conditions
4. Document the gaps between current and target conditions.  Identify the waste.
5. Develop Countermeasures for the wastes and develop action plans to test the countermeasures
6. Create follow up plans to institutionalize the change
7. Track the results
8. Document reflections and lessons learned to maintain the organizational knowledge.

I will blog on the A-3 in a future session.  The key takeaway at this point is that the improvements you are making are following the scientific method.  The improvements are linked to value stream improvement, and they are linked to your organizational strategy and their corresponding outcomes.  As a side note, many of the previous blogs in this site talk of improvement tools and lean thinking.

Next week we will talk about step 5, sustaining improvement using visual management and leadership standard work.

Lean Blessings:

Ron

Ron Bercaw
http://www.breakthroughhorizons.com/