Chapter 9

Flowing in the Right Direction: Lean Projects and Kaizen

In This Chapter

Understanding kaizen

Using kaizen to improve the value stream

Practicing kaizen in a workshop

Recognize that a value-stream map (VSM) is just that: a map. A VSM of the current state shows where you are and, once you analyze it, what needs to be improved; a VSM of the ideal state is a vision of what paradise looks like; and a VSM of the next future state shows where you’re going. But a VSM does not tell you how to get there. If you were to take a trip, you would pack your map, but the map alone won’t get you out of your driveway. You need to know the hows of the journey: the modes of transportation, the number of travelers, available resources, the timing of events, and so on. Kaizen is the how. Kaizen is the way you improve the value stream; it’s practiced through a continuing series of improvement workshops and projects — at both the individual and team level.

Have you ever traveled somewhere so much that you’re just as comfortable on the road as you are being at home? Experienced travelers or even commuters reach a point where taking the trip is no big deal. They don’t have to think about what they’re going to pack, which bag they’re going to take, how to make travel arrangements, or any other details. Traveling becomes second nature to them. As you travel down the road of Lean, a similar thing happens: The change is no longer a special event, but rather the very way you conduct yourself and your business every day. You begin to address problems continuously and to act in a Lean manner. You begin to behave in a Lean way. Kaizen is this way of life.

In this chapter, we tell you what kaizen is, how to practice kaizen in your own organization, and how to conduct kaizen workshops and projects.

Kaizen: A Way of Life

Kaizen is a Japanese word that translates to betterment or improvement. It has become a Japanese business philosophy. The goal of kaizen is to eliminate waste in the value stream. You accomplish this through the application of techniques like organizing work areas (5S, see Chapter 8), achieving standardized work, leveling production, balancing production to customer demand (takt time), right-sizing equipment, reducing inventory and work-in-process, just-in-time delivery, and more. Kaizen is how you improve quality and safety and reduce cost.

Although kaizen has typically been practiced in the West simply as an improvement workshop or event, true kaizen is a way of life. It governs everyday thinking and business. Kaizen is a regular, daily activity that considers the process as well as the results. It examines the big picture and takes in the whole of the environment, as well as the immediate issue locally at hand.

To practice kaizen is to respect people first. Equipment, facilities, processes, and technology are important tools — and they’re subordinate to people. Kaizen focuses on humanizing the workplace and eliminating hard — both mental and physical — work. And you don’t blame or judge people for the mistakes of the past, because blaming is in itself wasteful.

Kaizen involves everyone, at all levels; don’t relegate it to a function or specialty. Ultimately, everyone — from the CEO to the last office worker or factory worker — practices kaizen.

According to Masaaki Imai, one of the principle pioneers bringing Toyota Production System and kaizen to the West, a better definition of kaizen is “Every day, everybody, and everywhere improvement.”

Kaizen: The philosophy

Kaizen is a philosophy of improvement that encourages continuous, incremental changes in life across all aspects — personal, social, work, home, play. Kaizen means not letting a day pass without some form of improvement. If Western philosophy can be summarized as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” by contrast, kaizen says that even if it isn’t broken, it can — and must be — improved. Do it better and make it better. The alternative is stagnation and decline.

As a work philosophy, kaizen means continual, incremental change in all areas — large and small, internal and external — to improve the whole organization. Business kaizen considers the entire system of the business: Conduct improvement activities at all levels, with a systems view. The business philosophy of kaizen also calls for an unending effort for improvement that involves everyone in the organization — managers and workers alike.

The philosophy of kaizen in business concentrates on the processes that influence the outcomes — cause and effect. The kaizen philosophy also sees the business through two lenses: setting new standards and maintaining existing standards. More specifically:

Kaizen maintenance establishes the policies and rules that help maintain the performance levels set by the present managerial and operating standards.

Kaizen improvement focuses efforts on the continuous improvement of existing standards and processes or the innovation of new ones.

In both cases, the philosophy of kaizen calls on you to apply all appropriate training, materials, tools, and supervision to both improve as well as maintain your standards and processes on a continual basis.

Kaizen has been attributed as the basis for the many successes of the Japanese in global automotive, electronics, and other business and consumer markets. In Japan, kaizen is the overarching strategy for business. Everyone is encouraged to make regular suggestions for improvements. In companies like Toyota and Canon, hundreds of suggestions are defined, written, shared, and implemented by employees every year. And these suggestions aren’t limited to anyone’s specific work area. Kaizen is based on making changes anywhere that they might lead to real business improvement.

Kaizen in action

Kaizen requires everyone be involved — from the CEO to the last office or factory worker. But of course everyone’s role is not the same. At each level of management, the roles and responsibilities of kaizen are different:

Senior managers are responsible for defining the vision and direction of kaizen for the organization, setting goals, and creating the culture in which kaizen can thrive. Wherever kaizen requires investment and innovation, senior managers provide the resources required for implementation. Senior managers also ensure that the direction of improvement continues to improve customer value and improves the business in the direction of the ideal state.

Middle managers are required to ensure that the employees have the skills, materials, and tools to perform kaizen. They ensure that kaizen is occurring across functions in the organization and achieving the goals. They guide and teach the organization through questions and problem solving. They also implement kaizen.

Supervisors make sure that kaizen is occurring on both an individual and a workgroup level. Supervisors also ensure that the people follow standard operating procedures and practices. Supervisors train and coach employees and foster morale. They provide their own kaizen suggestions.

In addition, all managers must practice kaizen themselves. They show leadership by doing.

In the following sections, we present the Lean definition of waste, introduce the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle used in kaizen and review the foundations of kaizen implementation.

Eliminating waste

You eliminate waste in the value stream by doing kaizen: continuous improvement activities. When you examine the value stream in small increments, you see waste that you may not have seen before. Through the lens of kaizen glasses, you suddenly see the extra movement, the work that can be done more effectively, or the effort that doesn’t truly transform the product or service.

This waste may be the result of people and systems that are not performing to the established standards and practices, or you may need to define improved standards and practices. In either case, when you eliminate this waste, you improve not only the value stream, but also the conditions for the people who work in it.

Examine your value stream for waste, or muda, according to the seven forms of waste:

Transportation: Is there unnecessary (non-value-added) movement of parts, materials, or information between processes?

Waiting: Are people, parts, systems, or facilities idly waiting for a work cycle to be completed?

Overproduction: Are you producing sooner, faster, or in greater quantities than the customer is demanding?

Defects: Does the process result in anything that the customer would deem unacceptable?

Inventory: Do you have any raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP), or finished goods that are not having value added to them?

Movement: How much do you move materials, people, equipment, and goods within a processing step?

Extra Processing: How much extra work is performed beyond the standard required by the customer?

In addition to these seven “classic” areas of waste, Lean Master Shigeo Shingo defined an eighth form of waste: the underutilization of people. While waiting is part of the underutilization, the eighth waste is more about not allowing your people to contribute fully their talents, ideas and energy to their work environment. When you don’t fully engage on your people, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities for improvement and satisfaction. How can you entice your people to continuously improve?

Examine each of these eight forms of muda from the basis of existing operating standards and practices. Are the standards defined? Are they followed? If not, kaizen compels you to implement training and support in order to perform to established standards. If waste is occurring in these areas, despite performance to standards, kaizen requires you to define and implement improvements.

In addition to muda, explore your value stream for waste due to variation — mura — and also waste due to overburdening or overstressing the people or system — muri.

Using the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle

The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle is the Lean operating framework — the methodology for implementing kaizen. PDCA is a short-cycle iterative improvement scheme. It fits perfectly into the continuous-improvement philosophy of kaizen.

The PDCA cycle was first developed in the 1930s by Walter Shewhart, the Bell Telephone physicist often call the father of statistical quality control. PDCA was brought to Japan in the 1950s by W. Edwards Deming; in Japan, it’s known as the Deming cycle. Alternatively, it is referred to as Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA).

Here’s what the four parts of the PDCA (or PDSA) acronym mean:

Plan: Define the issue you are addressing. Create a plan for change, identifying specifically what you want to change. Define the steps you need to make the change, understand risk and predict the results of the change.

Do: Carry out the plan in a trial or test environment, on a small scale, under controlled conditions. Measure the results of the trial.

Check or study: Examine the results of your trial. Verify with data that you’ve improved the process. If you have, consider implementing it on a broader scale; if you haven’t, go back and try again.

Act: Implement the changes you’ve verified on a broader scale. Update the standard operating procedures and ensure everyone is performing to the new standard.

Many organizations who have adopted a Lean Six Sigma framework alternately use the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) approach from Six Sigma rather than the Lean PDCA cycle. DMAIC can work in a Lean initiative, but it’s different. DMAIC calls for the application of great statistical rigor and analysis in order to tackle complex problems. You involve specialists (black belts) who may take months finding root cause and devising the improvement plans. PDCA is kaizen: improvement methodology, practiced by everyone, with a trial-and-check step supported by data.

Standardizing work

Kaizen requires you to have standards — standard specifications, standard processes, standard systems, standard procedures, standard work instructions, and so on. Measure and perform all work to standard. After you implement any improvement, you must standardize to perform consistently to this improved state. (See Chapter 12.)

Innovating with Kaikaku

Kaizen is generally considered to be steady, incremental change. But what if there is a need for fundamental change, dramatic improvements, or a new system? When radical change or innovation is required, kaizen takes a different form, called kaikaku, which means reform or innovation (kaikaku is also sometimes known as breakthrough kaizen, flow kaizen, or system kaizen).

Kaikaku still uses the PDCA methodology, but to solve bigger problems. Kaikaku changes are usually capital intensive. When true innovation happens, you change the game. Seek inspiration from other applications, environments, or industries, and use new technologies or apply the results of new discoveries. Kaikaku can happen in a workshop environment. If you do a workshop, you will want to do some preplanning before the event because the changes are usually significant. For instance, you may have a manufacturing facility that you completely change to improve material and product flow. Or a discount store that eliminates the garden center and replaces it with a grocery department. Both are radical changes that require pre-planning to minimize operational disruption.

Here’s another example: Milk runs for inbound product pickup are commonplace today; the materials are picked up on a regular schedule and routed from multiple suppliers by a single truck. When milk runs were first introduced, though, they were a radical departure from the commonplace method of receiving product shipments. The inspiration for milk runs came from the food industry; the manufacturing industry innovated it. In this case, the change was not implemented overnight; small-scale implementations were expanded to form a new business standard.

Use 3P — the production preparation process (see Chapter 10) — as part of your kaikaku planning. This will help you avoid waste and maximize your resources and investment.

Improving the Value Stream with Kaizen

As you use the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle to improve the value stream in kaizen projects, you’ll find improvement opportunities across the entire value stream. Be sure to prioritize and select projects based on their impact to customer value. Your goal is to make regular, steady, incremental improvements, as opposed to large, breakthrough changes. Use your current-state and future-state VSMs to guide project selection.

A common problem in kaizen is oversized projects. Either you’ve selected too large a project, or you’ve allowed the project scope to creep up to an unmanageable size. To avoid oversized projects, focus on eliminating a single form of waste at a time, rather than multiple forms or all eight forms (see “Eliminating waste,” earlier in this chapter) at the same time. Don’t try to fix the entire value stream in a few projects.

Selecting projects

You can perform kaizen projects at three different levels: the individual level, the team level, and the management level. A Lean project can be part of routine daily business, part of an improvement initiative, or part of a formal workshop. Scope the project depending on the size and type of waste you’re targeting for reduction.

Select your projects based on a combination of several factors. Begin by analyzing the VSM and selecting the biggest contributing problem areas — those that directly affect customer value. Then, employ both qualitative and quantitative measures to seek out the data that highlights the key issues, particularly through direct customer feedback. Finally, use your experience to target the waste areas for improvement. Initial projects should be ones that will be highly visible to the customer and will make a significant impact on the business; these characteristics will create momentum for a Lean transformation.

Many Lean companies also have a suggestion program for identifying projects. In Japanese companies, these have proven to be prolific sources of project ideas. The ideas can come from anywhere, but usually they begin from within local areas or workgroups.

Take before and after photos and videos of the physical aspects of the problem you’re addressing. The images will give you an objective visual record of the improvement, facilitate knowledge transfer to other parts of the organization, and help you to realize how far you’ve come.

Project methodology

Lean projects follow the simple but specific framework of the PDCA cycle. The level of depth, as well as measurements, analyses, and controls may vary, but the foundational methodology is the same. After you’ve defined the project scope, begin the project cycle.

Within the kaizen methodology, one critical rule is that you must go to gemba — the Japanese word that means “where all activities are taking place.” As described by kaizen Master Masaaki Imai, gemba is where customer value is added in the value stream. Gemba is the most important place for management. Imai urges all managers to go to gemba.

The Plan Phase

During the Plan phase, objectively describe the change you want to make, in order to address the problem identified by the selection process and as represented in the current-state VSM. Include the following:

Identify the processes you intend to change.

Describe the steps needed to make the change in both the prototype/test and production operation environments to achieve the future-state VSM.

Ensure you protect your customer during the trials; they are always your first priority.

Predict the results and risks of the change.

At this point, consider performing a Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (PFMEA) to evaluate potential failures in the process. Consider what could go wrong, the impacts, and identify and prioritize risk-abating actions.

Use the same quality data and analysis tools as you develop the implementation plan.

What to expect: The project individual or group evaluates the situation using the data, as well as personal — and sometimes, physical — evaluations. They determine the changes that they intend to make, the steps needed to make those changes, and the measurements they’ll take to confirm the proper effects of the change. They predict performance targets and create an action plan that includes the definition of who makes the change, what is to be done, and when it will occur. They identify the required resources. Normally, the individual or project group will make the changes themselves, but sometimes outside resources are required. If a physical layout or a work area will be changed, the team will construct before and after layouts during the Plan phase. The team plans to make sure that the customer is protected during the time they are making trial improvements.

Before you move to the Do phase, make sure you have clearly identified the fundamental issue or problem you are going to improve — not just a symptom. Clear problem definition is vital, so you do not waste time or resources chasing the wrong problem.

The Do Phase

In the Do phase, you implement the plan in a trial or prototype environment — on a small scale and under controlled conditions.

What to expect: The team will demonstrate the improvements — and they will also reveal issues that may be associated with the full-scale implementation. Having selected a proper test or prototype environment, the test will be small enough to be conducted quickly, but large enough that the outcomes are valid and representative. The team will identify the differences between the test and target environments so that you can properly extrapolate the results. They will also capture data to support the decision to proceed.

The Check (or Study) Phase

In this phase, you’re examining the results of your trial or prototype implementation. Quantify the degree to which the changes you made improved the trial process, and predict the extrapolation of these results to the greater process.

What to expect: The project individual or group will review the trial data and determine whether the change is a valid improvement — using statistical methods, if necessary. If the trial objectives were met, then the project proceeds to the Act phase. However, if the improvement was not sufficient, the team might rerun the trial, or return to the Plan phase. If the trial did not solve the issue, the project returns to the beginning for failure analysis and new planning.

It is OK to “fail” as long as you take the time to learn from it. The best lessons come from experiments with unexpected results.

The Act Phase

In this last phase, you implement the changes on the full scale of the process. Update the VSM, the standards and specifications, and verify performance. Report the results.

What to expect: The project individual or group implements changes to all affected process people, systems, and technologies. They update all standard documents and procedures, including work instructions and visual controls, to reflect the change. Monitor the changes to ensure that the expected outcome is real and as expected. Update the current-state VSM to reflect the changes. Finally, communicate outcomes to affected stakeholders and management.

Communicate and involve management, stakeholders, and customers throughout the process. By the time the Act phase happens, they should not be surprised by the changes.

Individual projects

Kaizen philosophy empowers every employee to improve her work area, as well as suggest improvements in any other work area. With such grand empowerment comes the rightful expectation that every employee will also participate in the improvement of those work areas. In a kaizen environment, employees implement the ideas, not specialists.

Kaizen calls for small, incremental improvements to the value stream. Kaizen at the individual level is often related to improvements in an individual’s work area, or in how the individual performs her work. These changes are normally low-investment enough that the individual implements herself on a regular basis.

Even at the individual level, the project follows the same PDCA cycle, using the same measurement and analysis tools. Focus individual projects on the direct work area and responsibilities of the individual. They should go faster than the group projects; individual projects are often completed in a matter of hours or days. If the job being studied does not occur on a daily basis or is highly complex, then the duration may be longer.

Although Lean is a disciplined system, it’s also a creative system. Kaizen sets the stage for creativity to shine through. Kaizen enhancements can be as simple as creating a fixture from a piece of wood to perform an operation, outlining the shape of your tools on a tool board so you can see that all of the tools are present, or adding a guide to more quickly align and staple a stack of papers.

Remember MacGyver? He was that character on a U.S. TV program by the same name in the 1980s. With little more than a piece of dental floss, a chunk of wood and a wad of gum, he could always create something to escape from the tight spot he managed to find himself in on every episode. At the individual level, kaizen is done the same way.

Group projects

Kaizen projects performed at the self-directed group level are also known by the Japanese term jishuken. They follow the PDCA cycle, but the scope is typically much larger than the scope of projects performed at the individual level. Group projects may last weeks or even months. Observing the process, collecting the data, identifying the form of waste, defining and implementing the improvements, measuring the results, and standardizing the new work — it all takes time.

A risk to group success is that the team loses focus and interest, because the project takes too long or is not well defined. Before you leave the Plan phase, make sure you have a well-defined project. It is best to move singular or simple solutions quickly through the PDCA cycle so you show progress and maintain people’s interest.

Management projects

Management projects usually address strategic issues, administrative processes, cross-functional problems, or support systems. They tend to be technical and complex in nature. Their aims are to:

Reduce bureaucracy within the organization and its systems.

Ensure that the measurement and business systems support a Lean enterprise.

Ensure that requisite facility improvements are in place.

Use task forces and cross-functional teams to conduct management projects. These projects follow the PDCA cycle but may use statistical methods and simulations that are more advanced. Be sure to include the right people, those who have the best functional knowledge of their area and the overall process understanding.

Work team projects

A work team that dedicates part of its normal working time to kaizen can tackle a Lean project. A work team project involves and affects the whole team, not just an individual. Work team projects are usually self-directed, with the manager or supervisor advising team, instead of leading the project.

Work-team project meetings follow the principle of standardized work:

They have a timed agenda.

The team uses tracking documents.

Before and after pictures and charts track the team’s progress.

The team meets in an assigned area near the work space, not in a conference room!

In the assigned meeting area, the team displays key data that it uses for its problem-solving and improvement efforts.

Although the work-team projects are usually larger and more involved, they still follow the small, incremental, low-investment model that the individual projects follow. They also follow the PDCA methodology.

One of the challenges to work-team projects is that they can lose momentum and the team can become demotivated over time. The supervisor’s job is to set goals for improvement, keep the team on track, and celebrate the wins. Management’s role is to keep the supervisors on track and ensure that the improvements are aligned with the organization’s ideal state vision.

Kaizen: The Workshop

One of the ways to quickly improve the value stream is through the use of the kaizen workshop. Also known as a kaizen event or a kaizen blitz, the kaizen workshop is a fast and furious run through the PDCA cycle, typically in five days or less. During the kaizen workshop, the project team directly targets a specific area to find muda, mura, and muri, and remove it from the value stream. The source of waste may be anything — quality, communications, changeover time, organization, and so on — but regardless of the source, the workshop process you follow and your end goals are the same.

To focus properly on the workshop, the project team halts its normal work completely and does not produce its normal product or service. Advanced planning is required to ensure that you do not adversely affect your customers or other areas of the business while the improvements are happening. Kaizen-workshop solutions are famous for requiring minimal investment and yielding great benefits to the value stream.

Most people think of a production or manufacturing area when they think of a kaizen workshop, but remember that kaizen is for everyone in every area of the business. One Lean company understood that every area benefits from kaizen. They event held a kaizen event on the trunks of their salespeople’s cars!

Planning the kaizen workshop

For your kaizen workshop to be successful, you need the right project scope and the right team working full-time together, usually for three to five consecutive days. To pull this off requires planning. In this section, we will tell you how to scope a kaizen project, select the right team, and follow the workshop agenda.

Kaizen workshops interrupt operations for a few days. With proper planning this doesn’t have to be a problem. Coordinate within the organization to ensure you create enough inventory to protect customer deliveries.

Workshop scope

In most cases the team has the current-state VSM in hand. The workshop team should also have baseline metrics established before they begin. These, along with customer satisfaction, quality, and operational data, help decide where to focus the kaizen efforts. If the area has never experienced a kaizen workshop, focus first on 5S.

Conduct the initial kaizen workshops in or near where the work occurs and scope them to have a significant impact for the organization. The best kaizen workshops are those that solve a nagging issue (preferably an issue directly related to the customer); otherwise have them seek to accomplish something believed to be impossible (such as reducing machine setup time from days to minutes).

Take before photos or videos of the work area or current-state conditions, including office areas. These will later show how far the kaizen journey has taken you — like vacation photos!

Workshop project team

The kaizen-workshop project team should be cross-functional and include senior managers, the value-stream owner, people who work in the area, representatives from support functions, resources with special technical or business skills, and usually even a few people from elsewhere in the company who are unrelated to the area.

You may wonder why a kaizen workgroup contains people from unrelated areas. Isn’t it a waste of their time? The answer is a resounding “no!” The role of the unrelated team member is to ask the innocent and objective questions that make the team think in new ways. Outsiders also provide valuable experience and perspective on other areas of the business.

You can directly involve your customer in the workshop, if the scope of the project is appropriate. They can provide unique Voice of the Customer (VOC) perspective in the moment.

Successful Lean organizations have members of the leadership team, if not the CEOs themselves, participate or even conduct the initial kaizen workshops. Leaders must always take a very active role in the kaizen process, demonstrating the support and commitment for the transformation, as well as creating relationships with employees whom they might not otherwise meet. At the same time, the leaders must “authorize” change, not dictate change. Leaders do not have all the answers; their role is to “lead.” The people who make the product or provide the service are those closest to knowing what has to be done to eliminate waste. The leader’s job is to create a long-term vision, empower the employees, ask questions, and enable the change.

The kaizen workshop usually lasts from three to five days, depending on the experience level of the team and the number of hours per day that the workshop lasts. If you have multiple shifts, the kaizen should not only include representation from all shifts, but also occur during part of each shift. Although you may have standards in place, depending on how disciplined the organization is, you usually find that different shifts do different things.

A typical agenda

The agenda for the kaizen workshop is prescriptive and deliberate. Table 9-1 shows a sample agenda, indicating the major activities that occur during the workshop.

Table 9-1 The Kaizen Workshop: A Typical Agenda

Day	Theme of the Day	Topics and Activities Addressed during the Day
1	Training	Train on Lean concepts and principles Create team connection and interaction. (team building) Train more on muda, mura, and muri Review the current-state VSM Train on data-gathering tools and continuous-improvement tools Complete pre-kaizen metrics. Plan for Day 2.
2	Current-state analysis	Analyze current process. Brainstorm improvements. Design new work methods. Plan for Day 3.
3	Process implementation	Implement 5S+ safety Streamline flow Implement process changes — participants do the hands-on work Instruction of changes Identify additional improvements Pilot changes in work area Plan for Day 4
4	Observe and refine	Validate Day 3 improvements Verify full-rate production Refine improvements Establish standard work Plan for Day 5
5	Sustain and celebrate	Establish visual controls Complete all changes to standards Establish follow-up plan Complete post-kaizen metrics Present the results and celebrate

Conducting the kaizen workshop

After you have your plan in place, it’s time to rock and roll. The team members work hard during the workshop, doing work that is not normally in their job descriptions and making a lot of improvements to the value stream in a short amount of time. In this section we tell you what to activities to expect and remind you to celebrate your successes.

Workshop activities

Have you ever watched one of those home-improvement makeover shows, where the homeowners, with the help of a design team, remodel a room in a house over a weekend? Or an organization show, where they take a few junk-laden rooms in a house and make the owners get rid of 90 percent of the contents? Whether they realize it or not, these shows are doing kaizen events in these peoples’ homes. They’re implementing 5S (sort, straighten, scrub, systematize, and standardize). They work long hours in a short time and, at the end of the show, there is a complete and amazing transformation.

Usually, the designer or show host asks the homeowner, “What is not working with this space?” Then they create a plan to address these issues. In this case, the homeowner is the customer. In the case of a work scenario, you have customer data that answers the “What’s not working in this space?” question. It could be related to poor performance or, better yet, it could be related to new business. No matter what the focus, you as a team member will roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, work long hours, and do work that is dramatically different from you daily activities!

If the aim of the workshop is to free up floor space, then you’ll be cleaning out the unnecessary items, like inventory, tools, boxes, and things that just don’t have a real home in the area. The team creates a new process flow and rearranges the equipment as needed. When the space is free, cordon it off to protect it.

Oftentimes multiple kaizen workshops will create pockets of space, but not necessarily usable space. You need an overall plan for the facility to coordinate floor-space-clearing kaizen workshops.

An automotive facility received new work into an already full plant. Through the implementation of multiple, coordinated workshops, it was able to create usable space. Over a six-week period, the customer was not impacted at all, yet 39 work areas were transformed over six weeks to create 60,000 square feet of usable space. All the teams participating in the kaizen knew that free space needed for the new business — what need to happen and why it needed to occur. The coordination among the teams working toward a common goal was the key to the success.

If the workshop goal is to increase equipment uptime, then the team will usually clean the equipment. If appropriate, the team may paint the equipment a light color. If, for example, the team is working on a stamping press; the new paint provides a clean surface for all to see leaks or other issues. They use maintenance data and history to investigate the issues. They may examine spare parts availability and inventory. They establish a new preventive-maintenance standard. By the end of the workshop, a real transformation will occur.

Celebrate the win!

By the end of the workshop, you may not recognize your area! The team will be highly motivated. During the span of a few days, they will have incorporated many changes, and usually a few items will remain open. The follow-up plan will enable the team to ensure they close all the items. Seek to close all open items within 30 days of the workshop.

If the kaizen is part of a coordinated effort, like in the automotive example, then not only celebrate the success of each step taken, but also celebrate with everyone when they reach the collective goal.

Sustaining the kaizen-workshop gains

After the workshop is complete, one of the most important steps must occur: changing the standards to include the changes. Frequently, teams omit this vital step, causing the gains to be short lived and many of the benefits to be lost. The supervisor is responsible for ensuring that the employees are following the standards. Each employee is responsible for executing to the new standards. Develop this shared responsibility during the workshop.

If clearing out floor space was your goal, then consider constructing a barrier around the new space. Put a sign in the area communicating why the space was cleared out. Monitor the area to make sure that “mysterious” items don’t suddenly appear to fill the space again. If you aren’t diligent, the space will fill up again.

Establish regular weekly and monthly (7-day, 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day) verification points so everyone can ensure the changes are functioning in a regular daily environment as designed. Schedule reviews with managers (preferably conducted in the improved work area!), particularly if you need them to provide resources. When all of the items are complete, conduct a final review session of what results were achieved and what lessons were learned that could be leveraged to other areas of the business. Did you achieve the goals and objectives laid out at the start of the kaizen? This communication is vital to securing management support for sustaining the improvements, and garnering their commitment to do more kaizen workshops.

Kaizen workshops are powerful — so powerful that some organizations have found themselves using them as their only approach to kaizen. Be careful not to limit yourself this way: It will relegate Lean as a “special program” and limit success. To sustain Lean practice, use kaizen as the way you do business.