Customer demands continue to increase. Customers don't want to wait long for their goods or services, as evidenced by students having their textbooks printed at Kinko's or their school library. Today, the firm that stands still falls behind.
We focus on implementing Lean Production in refurbishment and repair businesses, which are more complex then manufacturing due to the additional disassembly, inspection and component repair operations.
Concurrently, costs of production are again on the rise. Reducing the labor input required for stable volume – or increased volume without additional plant, equipment or labor – has tremendous value.
Understand Management's Challenges
Determine the challenge and its magnitude. Which product or products is the most critical? Is the problem cost? If so, in which account? Is the facility able to meet demand? What is the current lead time? Are sales being lost due to capacity or to lead time? What is the firm's reputation for quality? How much improvement is necessary? How do the company's office activities like quoting, engineering and billing compare to those of other companies?
Objective: Understand the goals.
Walk the Production Line with Direct Management
Physically walk the production line with a manager who knows the process. In office processes the production line usually includes paper documents and computer files. Determine the approximate duration of each operation in the production process. Which operations are done in batches? Which are vendored out? How many people per shift? What operations are done on the back shifts?
Objective: Understand the process.
Lay Out a Plan of Approach
Articulate in writing what can be accomplished and in what order things need to be done to achieve success. Discuss any hidden challenges discovered during the evaluation. Introduce Lean concepts and how they should be applied to meet management goals. Ensure that the Plan will meet top management's goals and discuss flowdown plans for those goals and metrics to reach all employees. Identify communications channels.
Objective: Ensure conceptual agreement.
Introduce the Program to All Employees
Hold short and interactive awareness sessions with all employees to explain basic Lean concepts and management goals. Include examples from other locations, where the result included less effort for the same production result. Attempt to assuage employee fears by answering their questions of "What does this mean to me?"
Objective: Neutralize obstructionism from fear with support from knowledge. Paint a picture of a workplace of fewer frustrations. Set the tone of the importance of employee ideas and involvement, that they are who will remain after the consultants leave.
Personalize the Need for Change
Using a variety of techniques that rely heavily on organizational behavior, uncover the indicators of a need to change that employees who see them every day may not notice. Lead the early adopters to influence the late adopters.
Objective: Lead everyone involved to recognize the need for change.
Erect the Score Board
Establish highly visible metrics to act as leading indicators of improvement. Early adopters will see this as an indication of their influence and involvement. Late adopters will see this as evidence that they may be left behind.
Objective: Focus attention on critical factors for success.
Hold Frequent Improvement Events
Lead the carefully selected teams to try concepts introduced to them, to make rapid improvement in the production process during one-week long events. Foresee and prepare for team support, such as for moving work stations.
Objective: Make measurable improvement – fast!
Review Actual Progress against Goals
Discuss metrics and schedule weekly steering committee meetings. Establish and implement corrective actions.
Objective:Maintain forward momentum.