Continuous Improvement Office Reset
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•Acquisitions by companies that don’t understand the importance to sustain Lean activities
•Lack of Management Support and focus causes the Lean program to fail. Lean is not a “program you get started and forget about it”. The most successful companies set yearly objectives as to how many events management must be a team member on. This includes directors and vice presidents and presidents.
•Multiple changes in upper-level management creating gaps in Lean knowledge and directional changes.
•This is like a losing sports team. Due to a lack of performance, there is CONSTANT changes to management and coaching. Each new management and coaching team come in and imposes their policies and plays. Without consistency, the team is in constant turmoil and thus, under performs.
On the other hand, a winning sports team has consistent management, coaching, and lead players. The results is year over year improvement and success.
Relate this lesson back to your business/organization.
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What has made some of the best Japanese companies so competitive? Consistency and Focused Direction. Two examples:
•Toyota – The project leader for the Civic has been very consistent and has lead multiple versions of the Civic.
•When hired at Canon you are told you are now a Canon Family Member. What that means is you have a job with the company for life.
•Consistency and Focused Direction leads to Success
As a consultant company who is partnering with your business to improve, we expect continued support from management. If there are questions as to what management needs to do during the implementation of the Lean journey, we offer Senior Management Lean Leader classes.
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The last area of concern is erosion of Lean skills due to staffing changes within the Lean Office. We have found that there is reduced understanding as staffing within the Continuous Improvement office changes.
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What is at the Root of this Erosion:
If you have evaluated and come to the conclusion your Continuous Improvement office needs a “refresh and reboot”, we offer an extensive Lean Office organization, training, and implementation course.
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This is a four-week program where we emphasize the lean principles and re-teach the tools one at a time explaining what is important for each tool. During this class, members will be assigned to specific departments and will work on improvement projects that will be presented at the end of the class. This class can be performed during a four-week period, or as most companies prefer, one week a month for four months with “homework” to be accomplished between classes.
