IMPLEMENTING LEAN
Philosophy of Lean Thinking
Lean Transformations Group is part of an international network of leading Lean practitioners. A fundamental principle for LTG and our network is the importance of understanding Lean as a management philosophy and concept, and NOT just as a series of tools to eliminate waste. Therefore, it is a prerequisite in working with our clients, that the Lean transformation effort has the support and commitment of senior management.
LTG begins your Lean transformation with a review of your business objectives to understand how and where to initiate a Lean operating strategy. We assist your management team in making these decisions and getting agreement to commit to the strategy. We then customize our efforts in accordance with the specific needs of your organization.
Our Approach: Learn by Doing
LTG's approach is to support our clients in becoming self-sufficient Lean practitioners as quickly as possible, which includes knowledge of basic Lean concepts and continuous improvement practices as well as the ability to lead focused Kaizen events with internal resources. We strive first and foremost to ensure the transfer of both Lean knowledge and Lean implementation skill from our practitioners to our clients. Our proven approach is to have clients "learn by doing" supported by our "coaching" technique that will not only teach your personnel but will also develop them to "coach" others.
LTG also emphasizes the development of a "system" of management and leadership practices that is needed to support and sustain the types of process improvements needed for a Lean transformation. This approach requires greater involvement of our resources for the first months, then reduces as your team gains knowledge through application of Lean tools, techniques and required management system.
Where Do We Start?
PLAN: Every Lean transformation needs a plan. The value stream map is LTG's tool of choice to get your team started by visualizing the streams of work within your organization - both the primary value streams and the key supporting value streams. The value stream map clearly points out improvement possibilities in a given value stream and helps prioritize the use of Lean tools for specific improvement areas. It is an iterative tool that is used to continually guide the Lean transformation process.
DO: Implement the work plan from the value stream map by sequencing and completing Kaizens (ie. improvement projects) as per the value stream vision. This is where the real learning of an organization begins: understanding the details of the value stream work as it is redesigned. The improvements have specific Lean metrics tied to them so the team and management can see the improvement trends as the Lean transformation progresses.
CHECK: Progress reviews used on a frequent basis enable the team to identify countermeasures where pieces of the implementation are experiencing difficulty. In this way management can help the team succeed through use of additional resources, etc.
ACT: The countermeasure defined in the progress review is used to keep the implementation on track. Once the value stream future state is completed, it is time for another iteration of the value stream redesigns, each iteration resulting in a more effective and efficient process.
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