Lean Tips Edition #315 (#3751 - #3765)

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Lean Tip #3751 – Track the KPI Metrics After the Kaizen 

 

After the kaizen an important step is to track the metrics that measure the performance and impact of the changes. You should have defined these metrics before the event, based on the goals and scope of the project. You can use a dashboard, a control chart, or a run chart to display the data and monitor the trends. You should also compare the actual results with the expected results and identify any gaps or deviations. 

 

Lean Tip #3752 – Audit the Standard Work 

 

Conduct audits to verify that the changes are being followed and maintained. You can use a checklist, a gemba walk, or a 5S audit to assess the adherence and compliance of the standards and procedures that were established during the event. You should also provide feedback and coaching to the team members and address any issues or challenges that arise. 

 

Lean Tip #3753 – Celebrate Success and Recognize Achievements for Successful Kaizen Events 

 

Taking the time to celebrate the small wins along the way reinforces the positive outcomes achieved and helps to reinforce the learning that takes place during the process. Recognizing and rewarding employees for their contributions helps keep them motivated and encourages others within the organization to stay focused on improvement initiatives. By recognizing and celebrating success, organizations demonstrate their commitment to continuous improvement and build morale throughout their teams. 

 

Lean Tip #3754 – Review Progress and Adjust as Needed 

 

Make time for a post-event review. During the review process, encourage open discussion. All team members should be heard and have their viewpoints considered. Every Kaizen event is an opportunity to learn lessons that will make the next event even better. Periodic reviews streamline process changes and  keep teams engaged in innovation and continuous improvement for success. 

 

Lean Tip #3755 – Don’t Leave a Huge Action Item List 

 

Too many Kaizen Events are deemed “failures” because changes didn’t get implemented during the event. The intent of a Kaizen Event is to actually test and evaluate changes during the event. Sure, there are always going to be a few “action items” to follow up on (from a document sometimes called a “kaizen newspaper”). But, if your events end with no changes and a promise or a list of things to do, it’s less likely that people will be able to find the time to implement these changes. When you have people’s time carved out for the event, you need to make the most of it - which includes testing changes and taking action. 

 

If you’re finding that you run out of time to implement anything in your Kaizen Events, consider making the scope smaller for future events. It’s better to implement a smaller change than to spend a week analyzing and planning without doing. 

 

Lean Tip #3756 – Ensure Your Managers Exemplifies the Lean Philosophy 

 

During a Lean transformation, it’s important that managers not only support, but also actively embody the Lean philosophy in every aspect of their leadership. This philosophy requires managers to lead by example, demonstrating commitment through continuous improvement, respect for people, and a persistent focus on customer value. By doing so, they set a powerful precedent for their teams, fostering a culture of efficiency, accountability, and innovation. All in all, managers play an important role in implementing lean principles successfully. They connect theory with practice, motivate their teams to welcome change, question the current norms, and aim for excellence in all endeavors. 

 

Lean Tip #3757 – Encourage All Employees to Actively Participate in the Overall Process 

Throughout the Lean transformation journey, it’s crucial that the individuals involved in the production process take the lead in driving improvements. 

 

This approach is rooted in the understanding that those who are on the front lines, executing the daily tasks and facing the operational challenges, have the most thorough knowledge of the workflow, bottlenecks, and potential efficiencies. That is to say, their firsthand experience equips them with unique insights into practical, impactful changes that can lead to significant improvements in productivity, quality, and overall process efficiency. 

 

So, by empowering these team members to identify, suggest, and implement enhancements, Lean organizations not only optimize their operations from the ground up, but also foster a culture of continuous improvement and ownership among their workforce, which is essential for the sustainable success of a Lean transformation. 

 

Lean Tip #3758 – Set the Foundation for Continuous Improvement 

 

Lean thinking and continuous improvement focus on reducing waste and maximizing customer value. This involves process improvements, streamlining operations, and cutting unnecessary steps. Engaging employees in this process is important. It can be done by providing training and resources and empowering them to identify improvement opportunities. Creating a system for feedback and recognition also helps. 

 

Establishing cross-functional teams and encouraging collaboration and innovation are beneficial too. By laying this foundation, organizations can improve productivity, efficiency, and quality for long-term success. 

 

Lean Tip #3759 – Tailor Lean to Fit Your Business 

 

Lean Manufacturing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s imperative to customize Lean principles to fit your specific business needs and processes. This involves adapting the core concepts of Lean to align with your company’s goals, industry requirements, and unique challenges. Each business has its own set of variables, and what works for one may not work for another. Lean Consulting can offer specialized guidance to ensure that Lean strategies are effectively integrated into your operations, making them more efficient and sustainable. 

 

Lean Tip #3760 – Set Realistic Expectations 

 

While Lean Manufacturing can bring about significant improvements, setting realistic expectations is crucial for long-term success. Unrealistic goals can lead to disappointment and frustration among employees and management. It’s important to understand that Lean is a gradual process that requires time, effort, and patience to achieve meaningful results. Clear communication about the expected timeline and outcomes is essential. Engaging in strategic Lean consultancy can help with achievable milestones and provide a clearer picture of what to anticipate at each stage of implementation. 

 

Lean Tip #3761 – Cultivate a Customer-Centric Culture 

 

In today's business environment, a customer-centric culture is essential for success. Companies need to stop focusing solely on their products and services, and instead start considering their customers’ needs and wants.  

 

Consulting clients during the product-development process, taking their feedback seriously, and prioritizing their needs are all parts of developing a customer-centric culture. 

 

Lean Tip #3762 – Foster Innovation and Creativity 

 

Innovation and creativity are indispensable tools when it comes to staying ahead of the competition and driving company transformation. This requires a culture that promotes experimentation, risk-taking, and failure-based learning. 

 

Leaders must give resources and support to encourage innovation, recognize and reward creative thinking, and cultivate a culture where workers feel empowered to take risks and contribute new ideas. 

 

Lean Tip #3763 – Invest in Employee Development 

 

Putting money into employee training and education is another must if you wish to transform your business. Training and resources must be made available to support employees in acquiring new skills and staying up to date with market changes.  

 

Additionally, managers should strive for a culture that values and places a high priority on learning and development, recognize and promote high-performing workers, and offer chances for career advancement and development. 

 

Lean Tip #3764 – Build Strong Partnerships and Collaborations 

 

One of the most effective methods for bringing about change in a company is forging strong relationships and collaborations. Such partnering and collaborating involves sharing knowledge, resources, and skills with other groups, both within and beyond the sector.  

 

Businesses can get new insights, gain access to new markets, and develop innovative solutions that would not otherwise be viable without forming solid partnerships. 

 

Lean Tip #3765 – Break Organizational Silos and Resistance to Collaborate 

 

In many organizations, departments or business units operate in silos, with limited collaboration or information sharing. This can hinder transformation efforts that require cross-functional coordination and alignment. To address this challenge, foster a culture of collaboration and break down silos through cross-functional teams, shared goals, and open communication channels. 

 

How to Set Team Goals that Drive Success

Most managers know how important it is to set goals for themselves and their teams. Without some form of direction, teams will meander and just deal with the urgent things that crop up every day.

As leaders, the crucial task of team goal setting falls on your shoulders — it’s your responsibility to establish what needs to get done, what tasks to delegate to whom, and how to bring everyone together to meet every objective. 

When employees have a clear understanding of company objectives and how their work collectively contributes to reaching these, they become an aligned, motivated, and higher-performing workforce — exactly what drives business success. 

With goals to aim for, teams work together to attain something that psychologists call ‘subliminal directives. That is, they have a direction to take that they don’t have to think too deeply about…it just becomes a natural tour-de-force. 

But how should these goals be set? Here are some tips to ensure they are inspiring for the team: 

Few in number: This focuses the mind, so people aren’t pulled in all directions 

Stretching: This makes people work smarter and takes their thinking ‘out of the box’ 

Focused on outcomes: This ensures results are focused on, not activities 

Captivating: They make people desire the outcomes, hence putting more discretionary energy into them 

Valuable: Goals are seen as important to all stakeholders inside and outside the team 

Aligned with values: They are seen as taking the team in the direction they wish to go 

Reduce silo mentality: Goals need collaboration and co-operation from people and teams outside the confines of the department 

These seven components help the team to buy-in to the concepts of teamwork, as they help them achieve and attain something of a higher nature than just doing a job. Relate goals to what will make the team feel successful about themselves, creating a willingness and desire to go out of their way to work smarter. 

The best goals are aimed at providing results that have a real meaning for team members, helping them on the direction towards the vision and mission of the department or organization. That’s a powerful reason why people should be wanting to achieve the goals you set. 

By implementing these tips, teams can enhance performance, foster collaboration, and maintain motivation and engagement. Remember, the journey to achieving successful team goals is continuous and requires dedication, adaptability, and a supportive environment. 

Lean Quote: Leadership Should Be More Participative than Directive, More Enabling than Performing

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing."   —  Mary D. Poole   

When you hear the word “leadership” what comes to mind? There are numerous definitions of leadership. For me leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen. Effective leadership comes down to people. It is about the ability to successfully engage and maximize all human resources for the attainment of that vision.

In my mind there are 5 elements of leadership that are necessary to make the extraordinary happen.

Engage – Communication at all levels and through all available channels is key to success in connecting the “isolated” team members and bringing them together as a team. This is not about the technology and tools (of which a myriad variety is available today) but about the basic steps to create an emotional connection. Listen, converse, and reach out often to build a rapport with your team members and a shared environment of trust. Create frameworks and processes for communication, decision-making and problem solving for your team with guidelines on how, when and where people can interact with each other to set the expectations and the pattern.

Empower – Micromanagement of tasks is ineffective. So let go the old style of leadership and move to outcome based leadership. It’s all about trust. Give autonomy (with accountability) to your teams. Set goals with deadlines – make sure that your teams fully understand the goals and have the support that they need to achieve them – and track them on outcomes instead of tasks. Address problems early and be available to your teams.

Enable – This one is about technology and tools. Enable people to move forward in their work by committing appropriate resources, removing obstacles, helping them work across boundaries, and aligning processes, structure, and systems. Evaluate the options that best fit the team and the business needs and provide the facilities to your team to enable productive working across environments.

Energize – Enthuse your teams by providing a shared vision and purpose. Make it clear about how their work contributes to the success of the organization. Make your teams successes and contributions visible throughout the organization. Encourage the team to mentor each other and make wins and losses a joint responsibility by celebrating wins and learning from mistakes together.

Exemplify – It all begins with you – walk the talk and set the right example through your own actions. Be proactive, alert, transparent and always available for your teams. Put in more effort to stay connected with your teams, appreciate often and be sensitive to the work-life balance of your team members. Leadership needs a lot of integrity and honesty and not everything can be laid out in black and white in policies and processes. Influence your teams through your own example and by being a role model so that there is no confusion within the teams on the “right” way to do things.

Lean Roundup #191 – April 2025

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of April 2025.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.  

 

Fluctuations on Continuously Moving Assembly Lines 3—The Value of Team Leaders - Christoph Roser talks about one key tool for reducing fluctuations on Toyota assembly lines is the team leader, the frontline support for operators.

 

No Substitute for Experience – Bruce Hamilton shares a personal story illustrating the lesson for why there is no substitute for experience.

 

Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 1 – Pascal Dennis shares four levels of Visual Management, in order of increasing power.

 

Starting a Lean Transformation: Building a Team of ACEs - Tyson Heaton and Noel Jarin talk about how activating, cultivating, and elevating a team of ACEs can drive lasting performance gains across any operation.

 

Want to Improve Your Product Development? Prioritize Organizational Learning  - Steve Shoemaker discusses why product development excellence depends on stable, cross-functional teams and a culture that learns from both failure and success.

 

Solving the Productivity Paradox - Jacob Stoller shares how leaders can drive real gains—not by cutting people, but by engaging them in redesigning work.

 

Multi-level Visualization: Engage Everyone in Problem-Solving to Achieve Business Results - Michael Ballé shows how leaders can use visualization to align lean problem-solving with business results.

The Difference Between a Lean Leader and a Regular Leader - Alen Ganic gives insight into what you can do to become an excellent leader—what we call a Lean leader.

Leadership by Fear Doesn’t Work — And Never Really Did – Mark Graban dispels the myth that fear is a performance enhancer.

Lean Isn’t Just About Cost: Stop Putting a Stick in Your Own Bicycle Spokes – Mark Graban explain why we should not sabotage our own efforts, take the stick out of the wheel — and keep moving forward, together.

The Lean Journey is Long and Winding Road

Lean is a journey that never ends. There will always be a gap between where you are (current state) and where you would like to be (True North). Since there will always be a gap, there will always be an opportunity to improve. Walking the path on a Lean journey can be an overwhelming experience.

A Lean journey is full of steps not all of which are forward. Failure will occur. It’s ok, the purpose is learning, and we learn through experimentation. Trying new approaches, exploring new methods and testing new ideas for improving the various processes is exercise for the mind.

Lean grew out of years of practice and experimentation at Toyota. No matter how much better they are than their competition, they continue to find more and more opportunities to improve each and every year. Lean involves the creation and implementation of continuous experiments to improve your strategies over time. This means experimenting with every process every day to get it right. We learn problem solving through hands-on improvement experiments. In Toyota and in lean thinking, the idea is to repeat cycles of improvement experiments forever.

So leaders must create a culture that puts failure in its proper place: a useful tool for learning, and a natural part of iterative experimentation. Management must avoid the temptation to harshly judge unsuccessful ideas. A leader who allows for experimentation sends a clear signal that personnel are encouraged to find better methods and products.

Organizations embarking on a Lean journey should follow a disciplined process of systematic exploration and controlled experimentation. Kaizen is the process which determines whether processes resulted in improvements. It refers to an on-going activity by all people (including managers) to relentlessly and incrementally change and improve practices in small experiments.

The road to continual improvement is a rocky one with many turns and ups and downs. Value the incremental improvement approach to continuous improvement. Through simple, common-sense, and low-cost experimentation a great deal of process improvements can be made. Experimentation is the exercise of a healthy Lean journey. Understanding this allows one the opportunity to begin the journey.

Lean Quote: Leaders Need to be Proactive, Not Just Reactive

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."   —  Arnold Glasow   

Leaders need to be proactive, not just reactive. If you find yourself spending all of your time trying to put out fires, then you aren't using your time effectively.

The success of a company can depends to a large extent on the ability of its staff to solve problems effectively, both in their day-to-day work and through innovation. We are all faced with problems to solve in our workday. We are often not in control of the issues we face at work or home. Problems just present themselves. And chances are the issues you're facing aren't so cut and dry. Having the right attitude can make the difference between success and failure.

The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need. Kaizen emphasizes problem awareness and identification. Once problems are identified, the problems must be solved consequently. Kaizen is a problem solving process which requires the use of various problem solving tools. In Kaizen, the mindset of “no problem” or “no opportunity” must be carefully avoided.

Opportunities for improvement exist in all aspects of every industry and can be identified by every person in any business. With the right culture of continuous improvement, problems, and technology, conscious identification of opportunities for improvement can transform a company into a more efficient, high-quality business.

Possessing good problem solving skills does not make people automatically use them to the benefit of the organization. They need encouragement, support and guidance in applying them to the organization’s problems.

A proactive leader identifies potential issues before they arise and takes steps to address them, actively seeking solutions rather than simply reacting to problems when they occur; this often involves anticipating challenges, gathering information, and engaging their team in brainstorming to develop preventative measures.

Leadership is as much about behavior as it is about strategy. By embodying the qualities you value, you inspire your employees to emulate these behaviors, fostering a workplace where respect is a natural byproduct of exemplary leadership. When you consistently act with integrity and professionalism, you set a high standard for your team to follow.