Use A Charter To Define Your Project
The charter is one of the most critical documents in conducting a lean six sigma project or kaizen event. It serves as a blueprint and forces you to think about what you want and how you want to do it. A clear and concise charter increases the likelihood of reaching the goals and ensures that the team knows what to do. It will also allow you and the team to determine whether the plan has been...
Read MoreTips To Ensure Your Kaizen Event Is Successful
Kaizen events are meant to be focused, short in length, low risk, and low cost. The idea is to try something, see if it works, then try something else. Kaizen events are a means of continually making improvements, identify waste and eliminate it adding more value as each new improvement is made. They are not intended to be a one-time event. The kaizen event must be planned and structured. ...
Read MoreThe Control Plan: Your Last Line of Defense
A control plan is a written document created to ensure processes are producing products or services that meet or exceed customer requirements at all times. It is a living document that gets updated as the organization gets process experience or receives customer feedback. A control plan is a systematic approach to finding and resolving out-of-control conditions. It provides employees a guide...
Read MoreFix Low Hanging Fruit To Build Momentum
When starting any improvement initiative, it’s important to have early successes in your efforts. The saying, “Nothing motivates a team like success” is so very true. If a team has to wait months before it sees improvement in the process it’s working on, there will likely be a drop in motivation for the team. To make sure this doesn’t happen teams should begin...
Read MoreStandardize Work Process To Provide Customers Better Products & Services
Much of the work we do consists of repetitive tasks: changing a die in a stamping press, closing the books every month or running a weekly or monthly meeting. These repetitive tasks can be studied and improved to make them more efficient, reliable, easier, safer, and more productive. We then document the best method and teach it to everyone associated with the task. This will make...
Read MoreTen Steps To Analyze And Improve A Product Or Service Using A Value Stream Map
Many processes suffer from inefficiency, mistakes, errors, defects, downtime and late delivery due to the waste inherent in them. The waste I’m referring to are: Transportation Inventory Motion Waiting Over-processing Over-production Defects Safety These waste exists because most of the time it’s the way the process has always been done and no one questions it or looks for the...
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