Speeding up Lean Learning

How to Speed Up Lean Learning in an Organization?

If you believe in lean, it is quite obvious that you want to apply lean to your organization too because you have seen the results. But, it gets very difficult to instill lean practices into your team members. You will have to teach different members differently. Among them will be some who can grasp your teaching instantly while, there might be others who take a long time to learn. Here the question that is likely to arise in your mind would be - 'How can I speed up my team's lean learning?'

You must understand that to speed up the process for your team, it is you who has to become a role model for them. So, to have an impact on your team's learning, you need to speed up your own learning first. Now, you might say that you have learnt lean so how does the question of speeding up your lean learning arise. It is a fact that as adults, we always see the practical value of what we learn before putting in efforts to learn. We choose what we want to learn and what we want to leave behind. This is not what is called learning. Instead, this means only adding new ideas to what we already know.

When you have a coach or mentor to teach you something, you might have seen that he insists that you work out on things that are difficult and meaningless too. You don't find it necessary to work out on those points but, it is your coach or mentor who knows that it will be useful only after you acquire the skill. Similarly, even some aspects of lean learning might seem to be slow and useless to you. So, you might be picking out to learn only those aspects of lean that you find useful to solve your immediate problems. But, this is just not right.

Those aspects that help you solve problems right away might seem sensible to you while, those that are hard or not useful at present might seem unworthy to you but, it is actually these aspects that lead to lean transformation in the longer run. This is where the two terms come into existence - assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation means adding new information to what you already know and understand, which is very easy. While, accommodation means using new facts to change your own understanding. This becomes difficult because as adults, our understanding becomes very consistent and rigid, and changing it completely becomes very difficult. When you are expected to change one field and start working towards achieving it, it leads to changing the connections to every other field too and soon you will realize that you need to change all your understanding towards the field because your thinking just doesn't fit in anymore. So, you will have to let go of your mental comfort zones.

You now understand that you need to learn lean further. So, make efforts to learn and speed up your learning process so that you can help your team members learn faster too. You will either need a sensei to teach you or you will have to work hard on your own but, you have to work towards understanding the unfamiliar aspects of lean thinking, not those that you already know. This process is going to be difficult but, rewarding too. Without a mentor, it is quite natural to pick up the learning that is easy to assimilate and avoid all the unfamiliar stuff that will force us to accommodate. But, you must understand that learning the unfamiliar aspects will lead to increasing the scope of performance improvement. If you let go of your comfort zone and practice daily, you will definitely be able to discover a 'new you'.

There are many workshops that provide the best lean training in India all throughout the year in different states. Here is a list of the upcoming workshops in the country for the next four months -

Lean training Delhi - 14 to 16 December 2015 and 16 to 18 March 2016

Lean training Mumbai - 18 to 20 January 2016

Lean training Bangalore - 15 to 17 February 2016

Lean Workshops to Manage High Mix/Low Volume Organizations

If you are one of the high mix/low volume businesses or belong to the made-to-order business segment, then you might be facing complicated problems because of increased variations of products and services. In such a case, when you want to apply lean principles to your processes, it may require certain amount of transformation before being applied.

To help businesses like yours, there are many 'Managing High Mix/Low Volume Organizations' workshops that come up in the country, where lean principles required in such organizations are demonstrated by focusing on the changing role and responsibilities of managers involved.

 

Through these workshops, you will be taught how to manage the indirect and administrative processes involved in your organization. You will be shown how different companies offering a wide range of products/services have been able to survive in the market by undergoing a lean transformation. In order to enhance your learning experience, everything taught to you will be supported by simulations, videos and practical exercises. Lean accounting, traditional methodology and adapted tools for cost and delivery will be other topics covered in these workshops.

Attending these workshops and understanding the methodologies will help you increase your capacity, reduce lead-time and boost the satisfaction of your customers towards your business. Leaders, operation managers, technical managers, change agents and all those working and managing in high mix/low volume organizations can benefit from these workshops.

Apart from these workshops, you can also attend Lean India Summit that is going to take place on 9th and 10th December 2015, where you can learn about lean from the best known lean sensei and the most enlightened speakers from diverse industry segments. To know about all the different workshops or Lean Seminars India that you can attend to understand lean practice, you can stay connected at http://www.leaninstitute.in/

How does Lean apply in Healthcare Organizations?

Just like many organizations, even hospitals have started using lean in their systems, which involves redesigning the system to reduce the waiting time of patients and improving the quality of care given to them. While some might find this as time-consuming, many doctors find this as an opportunity to deepen their medical skills.

Dan Florizone, deputy minister of health and of lean from 2008 to 2013, and now the deputy minister of education said, "We’ve ignited a fire in civil service that we haven’t seen in decades." He said this after observing the passionate involvement of lean in the healthcare sector. If every member of the healthcare system from various functions work together, there can be better lean improvements. When service and wastage are seen from a patient's point of view, there can be improvements in patient care. Thus, it is not only important to involve the members of the organization but, also the patients in the improvement process.

You needn't spend too much time on reviewing a long list of projects to accomplish. Just focus on the tasks in hand and on a few vital projects to improve performance. Analyze what processes need the most attention immediately and start working on them.

For assistance on how you can apply lean in your healthcare organization, you can attend any of the lean summit that takes place throughout the year across different locations worldwide. For attending it in India, you can stay connected with www.leaninstitute.in to know the details of the Lean Summit that is going to take place on 9th and 10th December 2015.

Lean Workshop - Key Concept of Lean

A Brief about Lean Workshops and their Concept

Lean workshops are held at various places in different countries all year round to help more and more people understand what is lean and how they can benefit from lean. These workshops should be attended by individuals or teams who know about lean and want to increase their understanding, and for those managers who want to know how to implement lean in their organization.

These are two-day workshops that have been designed for those professionals who want to understand how lean philosophies work together to bring benefits to an organization. They conduct discussions and have professionals who give lectures about lean and videos to make the understanding better.

These workshops demonstrate the relationship between purpose, process and people. They explain how the involvement of every employee in the process of continuous business improvement can result in the success of any lean transformation. They also teach how every lean tool or element can work together as a system to bring quality long-lasting business results in terms of cost, delivery and safety.

Lean workshops also define the PDCA cycle i.e. plan-do-check-act as a practice to bring in continuous improvement in the organization. They explain how the management needs to support PDCA and involve A3 thinking as a problem solving tool. Group discussions provide an opportunity for everyone to share their experiences and the best practices they use, from where you could learn about new solutions that can help your organization.

You will also be able to learn the training and involvement of those practices that form the foundation of lean. Leadership mindsets and behaviors are also discussed, along with what management philosophies need to be applied to achieve the highest quality at lowest costs in the shortest time span.

If you want to understand about lean and are residing in India, you can attend Lean India Summit that will be scheduled soon. Stay connected with us to know the details.

How to Analyze the Right Problems and How to Solve them?

Mark Graban, an author, speaker, consultant and an internationally recognized leader in Lean Healthcare says, “No problem is a problem, and no problems means there is no need for managers”. The first thing that goes about in an organization is that nobody wants to admit that there are problems. And even if they do, they do not identify what the actual problem is. It is very essential to reach the root cause of the problem in order to get the perfect solution. So, you must first learn to admit that there are problems, identify the root cause of the problems and learn how to fix them along with knowing the priority of which problems to be fixed first.

Managers who are not united with their department and the members of the organization can never lead the company profitably. The problem with management will lead to organizational problems. The role of management leaders is to ensure that they are well associated with their department and other members of the organization, and that the different channels of the organization are working together as a team. Disordered departments and disconnected team members may lead to obstacles in achieving new heights for the organization by delaying the delivery of products or services to the consumers. On confronting problems with the users or not achieving the desired results, the managers easily blame the website or marketing campaigns. They fail to understand that the problem lies within the management itself, the failure in being able to have a proper process in the organization.

The leaders and all those involved in the management of an organization need to take the ownership of the problems and make sure that the right efforts are being put in to solve the issues. This does not obviously mean that they do it themselves but, they must hire such professionals who can manage marketing strategies keeping in mind the processes involved and what the customers are expecting.

There are many different levels at which different departments and team members work. Also, in a single department, every team member might be having a different proficiency level. It is the leader’s responsibility to make sure he does not let this arise as a major issue within the organization. He must make sure that such gaps between the team members are filled up or neglected so that every member can involve and engage better with the organization. The leader must ensure that there is no need for any kind of air of superiority or inferiority. For those who are not yet up to the mark, they must be well-trained to improve their abilities.

A united organization will always result in stronger business and happy customers. Apart from the team, the leaders also need to analyze the processes involved in the business – whether everything is up to the mark or any changes are needed, and where the specific changes need to be made. If the website is actually a problem, they must hire professional web developers and designers to check where the problem lies and take steps to improve it.

If you do not spend some time fixing the problems you have in your organization at present, you will be leading to more problems in the future, which will result in weaker business and loss of customers. Hence, fixing the problems is cheaper than neglecting existing problems and encountering failure in the future.

The Lean Management Institute of India is one such organization that conducts lean workshops and training programs that help you realize the problem and bring solutions to resolve it without wastage of resources and efforts. It encourages lean practices among every individual so that they implement it and bring success as a team.

How Can Lean Methods Be Implemented In Medical Practices?

It is essential that you work efficiently to maximize resources and improve quality. This is what lean is about. Lean thinking is a practice that aims to improve operations through continuous process improvement, standardizing processes, and eliminating waste.

Roger Gerard, an executive business partner with ThetaCare, a healthcare system in northeast Wisconsin, has over 38 years of experience in healthcare, manufacturing and service industries. This is what Gerard said about lean practices in medical practice at the Medical Group Management Association's Annual Conference in San Diego.

Gerard said that healthcare is a very expensive area which is becoming increasingly unaffordable for people to pay for. Thus, it is necessary that the costs of healthcare productions are reduced. This can be done only by removing the unnecessary wastes out of the processes and systems so that it creates great value for the people who are buying the products and services. He also said that it is important to analyze how the processes involved in the entire healthcare industry are affecting revenue, quality care and patient satisfaction.

On being asked how hospitals and other healthcare industries could involve lean to their practices, Gerard said that they will have to start with small experiments. Just like lean starts with simple things like getting organized and making tiny changes and then goes on to larger complex value-stream mapping, similarly, they too will have to put the entire healthcare industry under inspection and see how the processes are working together. They will need to make simple changes to the processes that are not going along well and then slowly and steadily, they can shift to faster growing solutions to help resolve the bigger problems. Gerard says that all this is important to maintain a standard practice to create better consistent quality.

While working on standardizing the processes, it is often seen that there is opposition from the members of the team. This is because they don’t understand that lean is a scientific method of improving processes. They find it as a method they are forced to follow by going against their own ways. If they understand the proper message that lean practices want to give, they will definitely begin experimenting and make changes in the process to get a better outcome.

When asked how he believes this lean transformation could be brought about, Gerard said that he would start by partnering with a physician and an administrator since both the clinical and administrative view points are necessary. It is important that the whole team starts experimenting together rather than individuals doing it their own way. He said that they could start small by looking at the supplies in practice and how they can improve in making sure that the staff has the supplies they need.

Gerard concluded that if every examination room is standardized and organized well, then it would become very easy for every member involved, may it be a physician or a nurse. Thus, lean is absolutely necessary in the healthcare industry too.

Key to Lean Transformation – Plan For Every Part

Managers in several organizations are constantly looking for ways and means of not only improving efficiency of the work force, but also the ways in which production cost and other expenses can be reduced. The basic premise of lean transformation is improved efficiency and intelligent reduction of expenses. But this transformation cannot be done achieved if the managers focus only on the macro aspects of production. Rather what is required is taking consideration of each and every micro aspects of the organization through PFEP – Plan for Every Part.

PFEP is essentially an electronic spreadsheet or database, which promotes precise, accurate, and controlled inventory reduction, and at the same time serves as the foundation for the continuous improvement of a plant's material-handling system. It contains all the critical information about parts being used in the production process. Managers can use this information to manage the material-handling system, size markets and storage racks containing purchased parts, as well as design timed delivery routes etc. This way not only do they keep the delivery system in a perfect condition, but they also see to it that each resource is used to its maximum benefit and there is avoidance of wastage. Thus PFEP facilitates lean management.

A usual PFEP contains data about each part like how each part is purchased, received, packaged, stored, and delivered to its point of use. Though much of this information exists in your organization, it is stored in so many different places under the control of several managers and is mostly invisible. This is why a PFEP is of great use. What makes PFEP so important is that it needs to be maintained in a flexible manner, so that continuous change can be accommodated in it.

How is PFEP developed?

First you need to gather essential information on every part number entering the plant, such as the part's specifications, supplier, location of supplier, rate of usage, storage locations, point of use, container size, as well as other key data. Once this is done the next step is to build the purchased-parts market. For this you need to establish rules for operating the market, such as an address system, process of addressing over shipments from suppliers, methods of addressing issues like the minimum inventory levels, and procedures for loading and picking parts to maintain a first-in, first-out sequence. 

The next step is to design a delivery route. An important part of a lean material-handling system is to deliver materials from the purchased parts market to the door step of the operators. Here you need to identify delivery aisles, select the right conveyance method, determine the stops and delivery points for the route, and create correctly sized point-of-use gravity racks at delivery points. Now that delivery route has been taken care of you need to implement ‘pull signals’ like the kanban cards, to control the precise times and quantities of parts delivered to cells.

The most important aspect of lean management is to continuously improve the system.  This can be done by daily monitoring of key performance metrics like delivery, productivity and safety. One of the best ways to implement PFEP is to start with one cell/ department at a time. This is how managers can systematically transform the organization into a lean one. Implement the PFEP method and see a positive change in the quality and performance of your services.