Tag: leanandcontinuousimprovement

Lean and Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement Is Not About The Tools, It’s A Mindset!

Glenn Sommerville

There are plenty of tools out there to help us with continuous improvement projects or for problem solving, but it’s not about the tools!  It’s about the mindset.  The mindset to simplify, make things better, reduce errors or defects, and reduce waste.

IMG_20190407_0959273It’s that time of year, at least where I live, that we anticipate warmer weather soon.  We hope!  That means the sap will start running for the annual maple syrup season.  A friend, that owns a farming business, asked me to help him tap some trees and hook up the sap lines in preparation for the sap to start running.  Sure beats the old days when I helped empty the buckets!  Man that was hard work!

Snyder Heritage Farms has various products, one of which is maple syrup.  Although not considered a large farm, they tap 2,500 trees with 3,800 taps pulling approximately 250,000 litres of sap through 24,000 feet of small lines. The small lines converge with 10,000 feet of larger main lines leading to the evaporator which boils the sap down to produce about 5,500 litres of pure Canadian maple syrup in an average season.

IMG_20190407_0959534

Even though I had helped in previous years, I was given a brief training course by the owner, Kevin Snyder, on the standard work to install the taps and connect the sap lines.  Kevin gave me some key quality points to ensure the hole was drilled properly, the tap installed correctly, and the line secured tightly.   What impressed me most though was his continuous improvement mindset.  He had determined the most efficient paths to walk through the bush to minimize walking, placement of the tractor in proximity to where we would need to reload with taps while minimizing the walking distance to/from the tractor to do so.  He established working zones for each helper to maximize coverage while eliminating any duplication or cross over.  He had nail pouches to hold the taps, harnesses for the drills so they were easy to carry and to set aside when not drilling, while eliminating the risk of setting them down in the snow and then leaving them behind.  All these things make sense, but what struck me most was his mindset.  He was very focused on making the process as efficient as he could to both reduce the burden on the tappers and make them more efficient, while also improving the process to reduce defective tap holes, taps, and hose line connections that could impact vacuum pressure and reduce sap yield.  At one point I complimented him on all the improvements he had made and for his mindset.  Kevin’s response as he trekked off into the snow covered bush to put in more taps was,

“When you’re the little guy, you have to be efficient!“

It is true smaller companies need to be efficient, but so do larger companies!  Unfortunately, sometimes larger companies lose focus and forget the importance of the team’s mindset by hammering out new tools while insisting the team find a “problem” to apply them.  Tools are important, but it’s the black-claw-hammer-on-brown-wooden-plank-209235mindset that is most important because mindset is what creates the drive for continuous improvement.  After all, not everything needs a tool to improve.  Sometimes, just pure observation, common sense, and know how is all that is needed.  Mindset coupled with tools can be powerful, but when you have a bunch of tools without mindset, everything looks like a nail waiting to be hammered!

Maple Weekend – 4th & 5th April 2020

IMG_20190407_1037409If you are near the Kitchener-Waterloo area, Snyder Heritage Farms hosts “Maple Weekend” on 4th & 5th April from 10:00am – 4:00pm where you can bring your family out to their farm for an instructional tour of the sugar shack and how maple syrup is made, take a tractor ride to visit the maple bush, and enjoy freshly made pancakes and sausages.  It’s a fun couple of hours for the family on a nice spring day, and of course, there’s lots of fresh maple syrup!

Snyder Heritage FarmIMG_20190407_1006115

1213 Maple Bend Rd.
Bloomingdale, Ontario

 

 

 

Contact me:

For additional information on High Performance Leaders Inc., click here.  Or follow on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @hp_leaders.

You can email me with any questions at glennsommerville@hotmail.com, find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glennsommervilleL2R/, or on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/gsommervilleL2R.

If you are enjoying my posts and find the information useful, please “Follow” me by entering your email in the follow box on the right-hand menu of my website www.glennsommerville.com

Lean and Continuous Improvement

Non-Manufacturing Example of High Performance Culture & Continuous Improvement!

Glenn Sommerville

Unfortunately, many people still think that continuous improvement, high performance cultures, and/or people-centric concepts are for manufacturing.  Those that do, are definitely missing out!

Point and case:  Scott Smith and I recently had the opportunity to visit and participate in a gemba (go & see) with Karla and Michelle from the Paris Dental Centre.  This is not your run of the mill dental office, and they certainly demonstrate that these concepts go well beyond the typical manufacturing environment!

Our gemba started at the main entrance at the front reception desk where the receptionists quickly greeted us with a smile and asked how they could help.  What was different than what I’m used to in a professional office was that their duties had been stream lined with the customer in mind.  How?  There were no phones!  They managed the direct face-to-face contact and relationship with their customers, rather than answering a continuously ringing phone line of incoming calls.  They focused on their customer, value streamed the roles/responsibilities, and created smooth flow.

As our gemba took us throughout the facility, it was obvious that 5S (sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain) principles were also in place as this rather large and very busy dental centre was orderly, and had effective visual controls throughout the facility.  Each of the main departments had visual team boards where the teams would conduct daily stand-ups to review their performance results, discuss ideas for improvement, and communicate important messages.  Even the dentists had their own board where they met daily to review performance and drive improvement in their work.  Standardized work was being implemented in the various roles throughout the office as well.

Now, are there opportunities to do more or to improve further, gain more engagement?  Of course!  We all have those opportunities!  What we have to remember is that continuous improvement, high performance or a people-centric organization is never ending.  Why?  Things are always changing!  Everyone on this journey hits the wall at some point and feels they are not progressing.  What’s important to reflect on is where you’ve come from, keep doing what’s working, tweak what’s not, and then keep plugging away at the next steps towards where you want to be.

Great job Paris Dental Centre, keep up the good work!

Cover picture:  From Paris Dental Centre – Michelle Vaandering, Karla Stonham, Heidi Burton Paris Dental Centre;   from HPS – Scott Smith

Similar topics: 

Gemba by any other name is… go & see! Gemba is NOT just for manufacturing processes!

For additional information on High Performance Leaders Inc., click here.  Or follow us on LinkedIn.

Contact me:

You can email me with any questions at glennsommerville@hotmail.com, find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glennsommervilleL2R/, or on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/gsommervilleL2R.

If you are enjoying my posts and find the information useful, please “Follow” me by entering your email in the follow box on the right-hand menu of my website www.glennsommerville.com

 

Lean and Continuous Improvement

Is Your Management System Limiting Your Success? 6 Steps To Start Improving Today!

Glenn Sommerville

Contributed by:  Scott Smith  @High Performance Solutions & Consortium

T2 Control Board - T1 Day by Hour.jpgA highly engaged and motivated employee is the most formidable weapon that an organization can utilize to compete and win. An engaged and motivated employee is more focused on doing their work, more productive, and is more likely to have a better work and home life.  However, less than 30% of an organization’s people fit this category. Less than 5% of organizations sustain high performance over the long term. One of the limiting factors may be your management system.

Here are a few simple steps to start to build a strong management system.

First, it is important to understand the purpose of a management system. In simple terms, your management system is in place to make sure you are dong the right things for your customers (or clients or patients). It does this by connecting everyone in your organization to your vision, strategy and big outcome measures to allow everyone to understand how they can impact the vision and connect to the big outcomes. The management system engages our humans through solving their own problems. The most effective way to do this is through ‘low tech, high touch’ planning and measurement white boards.

Here are the steps to start building or improving your management system:

1. Identify your customer and understand what value they need from you.

I find in a lot of cases, there is not a strong understanding of who the customer is.   Your customer is who gets direct benefit or value from what you do. For example, in health care, the patient receives the direct value from the care they are given.   If my role is a support operation in manufacturing, such as engineering that develops product drawings, it is the people who build the product from the drawings.    If my role is production, I deliver value directly to the end customer for the product.

2. Understand how you can easily measure the value you provide to the customer.

Our customers are easy. They want simple things.  They want their stuff NOW. They want it PERFECT. They want it WASTE FREE. They may also want a good experience during the process.

I recommend you start with NOW as it is the easiest.    We should all have a plan to deliver what our customer’s need when they need it.   My customer needs their drawings today to build their product.   My patient wants to continue to get better.  All you need to do is measure how well you delivered on your plan.   I would also recommend using a planning white board to show your commitment to your plan.

3. Graph your results to understand how you are doing.

What does a good day look like?  Did we have a good day? Typically it is getting done what we need to accomplish for our customer.  If you started with NOW, on your next white board – performance board – graph how well you are doing.   Measure for a few weeks so you can start understanding a longer term trend in performance.

4. Start understanding why.

Why did we not have a good day? If you did not have a good day and did not accomplish what you needed to do for your customer, start understanding the  reasons that are blocking your performance.  You should start seeing some recurring reasons.  For each reason, understand how bad it is by adding a bar or Pareto graph under your performance graph to track the number of occurrences.

5. Run some experiments to make it better.

Once you have a good understanding of the reasons why you are not having a good day, start running some simple experiments to fix the problem.  Below your bar graph, document the experiment and indicate when you started the experiment on your performance graph. This will allow you to see if the experiment had the results you hoped for.  If it did, adopt this as a new why to do your work. If it did not ‘t, try new experiments until you learn what does work.

6. When you are ready, add your other measures.

NOW, PERFECT, WASTE FREE.   Keep it simple and do not add too many additional measures.  Fewer measures are better, but it is important not to have a lonely number so you need to provide some balance.  For example, if you measure NOW, balance it by making sure you are also delivering what you customer needs PERFECT.

Remember – a strong management system is elegantly simple and is driven by the daily connections we make with our people. 

Contact me:

You can email me with any questions at glennsommerville@hotmail.com, find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glennsommervilleL2R/, or on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/gsommervilleL2R.

If you are enjoying my posts and find the information useful, please “Follow” me by entering your email in the follow box on the right-hand menu of my website www.glennsommerville.com

 

 

Lean and Continuous Improvement

Why 95% Of CI Initiatives Don’t Stick Long-term!

Glenn Sommerville

Wow!  Is it remotely possible that only 5% of companies are successful at creating a continuous improvement organization?  But, why?

According to a post by High Performance Solutions Inc., less than 5% of continuous improvement initiatives achieve long-term results and sustained improvement.  Through industry member problem solving they determined it was human factors and lack of management systems that lead to failures.  Actually, is this so surprising?  The question we need to ask ourselves though is, why?   After all, leaders want to improve the performance and efficiency of their organizations. 

From what I’ve seen and experienced, the main reasons seem to be one of, or in combination of the following:

  • Weak or missing vision
  • CI not integrated into the mission of the organization
  • Not enough focus or experience to deliberately create a CI culture
  • Impatience to invest long term, which is necessary to change and/or create culture
  • Disconnect between words/desires and leader actions
  • Management systems do not align or are disconnected from the desired CI culture
  • Leaders don’t walk the talk
  • Lack of or inconsistent leader standardized work at all levels
  • Misaligned outcomes or benefits between the organization and the employees
  • Poor or non-existent  “go & see” or gemba reviews by senior leaders to confirm the actual condition and gain engagement

Unfortunately, the list goes on….

Let’s learn collaboratively!  What has been your experience as to why organizations fail at creating long-term results and sustained improvement?  Leave a comment!  Let’s do this!

Contact me:

You can email me with any questions at glennsommerville@hotmail.com, find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glennsommervilleL2R/, or on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/gsommervilleL2R.

If you are enjoying my posts and find the information useful, please “Follow” me by entering your email in the follow box on the right-hand menu of my website www.glennsommerville.com

 

 

 

 

Lean and Continuous Improvement

3 Crucial Steps For Creating Strong CI Culture!

Glenn Sommerville

Creating a strong CI team culture does not just happen on its own, unfortunately!  There are 3 crucial steps to create any culture and if any are weak, so will be the resulting culture.  One or all of these steps are often overlooked, leading to a weak or undesired culture.

I recently resumed “Open Office Hours” whereby I have time slots in my calendar reserved for impromptu drop-ins or phone calls from anyone within my organization.  During one of these conversations we discussed how to change a culture within an organization which prompted me to dig up a mental model I used years ago when creating the “Lexus Mindset” to launch the first Lexus plant outside of Japan.  Since then, I’ve used this same model to create Continuous Improvement cultures in other organizations.

Culture Mental Model

 

Values  – The first step is to determine and align the organization with the values that are most important, and desired or necessary to have in order to meet the mission of the team or organization.  These values need to be well defined and communicated to everyone within the team or organization.

Behaviours – Next is to identify the behaviours that each member of the team or organization should exhibit that demonstrates the values previously determined.  These behaviours maybe different at various levels and positions within the team or organization based on the role or responsibilities.

Consistency – Everyone on the team must consistently demonstrate the desired behaviours.  Organizations most successful with creating their desired and sustained cultures are those where the members actively correct and identify unwanted behaviours and show recognition and appreciation for the desired behaviours.

Only when the desired behaviours are consistently demonstrated, are the values re-enforced, which then creates the culture sought after.  When the demonstrated behaviours contradict or are inconsistent with the values of the organization, the resulting culture will not be what was intended.

When we used this mental model to create the Lexus Mindset, we invested a great deal of time and discussion to determine the values we felt were necessary to meet our mission.  Once these values were determined, we worked together as a team to establish the behaviours that all members of the team would need to have that would clearly demonstrate and reinforce our values.  We then developed methods that we could both correct undesirable behaviours or recognize the sought after behaviours.  We made it fun and engaging at all levels.  I remember my team pointing out to me a few times, with a big smile on their faces, “Does this behaviour support the Lexus Mindset?”.  It was actually powerful and was very effective in changing our behaviours towards the ultimate culture we wanted to have.  Not only did it correct poor behaviours, but it also resulted in open discussions that challenged our old way of reacting or dealing with situations which facilitated a faster shift in our thinking and ultimately our behaviours.  We won the prestigious JD Power Gold Plant Award that year for the highest initial vehicle quality within North and South America, which I don’t think would have happened had we not created the culture that we did!

Contact me:

You can email me with any questions at glennsommerville@hotmail.com, find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/glennsommervilleL2R/, or on Twitter at  https://twitter.com/gsommervilleL2R.

If you are enjoying my posts and find the information useful, please “Follow” me by entering your email in the follow box on the right-hand menu of my website www.glennsommerville.com