When most people think of Lean ideologies and methodologies, they think of kaizen and continuous improvement first. However as one moves deeper into Lean, you begin to add new vocabulary and processes to your Lean tool bag. Today’s word of the day: kaikaku. Most that know or have heard of kaizen think of it as a slow continuous improvement that is necessary to sustain a successful operation. Kaikaku, on the other hand, translates to “radical …
Building a culture for your Lean processes to thrive on can be very difficult without the right tools and skills within the population of your facility. Lean is no different than safety or any other process your organization implements, it takes a culture that believes and thrives on the ideas your processes are founded on. Behind every culture though, is the understanding and appreciation for communication. Successful communication is made up of key ingredients, one …
Has Vocoli saved the suggestion box? The traditional suggestion box has long been thought of as a thing of the past. The dusty wood box that no one can usually find, sitting with a couple of broken pencils and some half doodled pieces of paper, has been in desperate need of an upgrade for years. Vocoli, a product of a Brighton-based Web development firm Massachusetts Technology Corp, was launched in September and is attempting change …
SDCA (Standardize, Do, Check, and Act) with LEAN principles. The SDCA cycle is simply a refinement of the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, and Act) cycle. The goal of both processes is to stabilize production. Many companies use this process to improve their product or service. Here is what your company may want to know about this process. 1. LEAN Marketing with SDCA Marketing cycles can be improved with iterative processes. Customer value is most often …
When it comes to coaching techniques in business, many companies utilize different methods to encourage their employees and quicken the learning process. Sometimes, a faster approach may lead to less understanding and more room for error, and coaches can be overly critical of their employees’ performances. Struggling to keep the momentum going while addressing problem areas, many coaches lose sight of the real end goal of teaching their employees core values. If you’re a coach, …
A Time to be Thankful Thanksgiving Day is full of food we rarely ever consume, watching football of teams we hardly care about, yet seemingly play every fourth Thursday in November, and family members we only see on the holidays. Yet at some point during the piling of calories onto our plates we find time to express what we are thankful for. This is usually a spontaneous answer, half full of emotion, and half full …
This fall marks the 25th anniversary of the Lean movement which continues to revolutionize the manufacturing industry and is now spreading into other industries as well. Jim Womack, former MIT researcher and well-known founder of the Lean movement was a keynote presenter at the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) in Toronto last month. Womack was introduced by CME president Jayson Meyers, who said he is “someone who has changed the world” by launching the Lean …
If you’re concerned about accountability, you should learn more about the responsibility every individual has in the workplace. In general, a person is accountable based upon their choices. They are accountable when they choose to enter the medical profession, and they’re accountable when they select a job in any profession that involves or requires the safety and well-being of others. Learning about accountability is necessary and easy with these few simple rules. What is True …
Cloud computing has emerged as the latest technology to help companies, but what are the benefits of this technology? Companies all over the world are using it to create a mobile workforce and to lower expenses. There are so many benefits to this new technology that any company with an IT department could use this technology to improve business processes. Here is what you need to know about this new technology that’s sweeping the nation. …
We’ve all had a bad experience at a restaurant. It’s nothing we or the restaurant ever hope for, but it’s the risk we take each time we venture out for a meal. We generally choose a restaurant for one of two reasons, the food or the atmosphere and set our expectations accordingly. For my most recent dining experience I went with the latter and made my way to Buffalo Wild Wings. There were multiple sporting …