Your CI list is long. Which projects should you pursue?
In my last blog entry, I talked very generally about the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act). In the first blog in this series, I wrote about how too many organizations get into the Do, Check, Act cycle without taking time to plan it out. We have covered the need to plan and the big picture process of the PDCA cycle. Now, I would like to continue moving from the big picture down to the tactical approach.
So, we need to plan our continuous improvement (CI) efforts for the next year. What should we do first? We need to determine what it is that we are going to improve. There are always thousands of things we need to do but only enough resources to really go after a few of them. So, which ones do we go after? Which ones will impact our business the most? Which ones will impact the customers the most? Which ones will help us be more profitable?
My recommendation is to start with your customers. There are several ways of selecting input from the customer. I don’t want to get into how to collect information in this blog, as that would be the fodder for a whole different series of blogs. However, if you don’t currently have a mechanism, try this approach: Pick three to seven of your biggest and most influential customers and call them or invite them to visit you.
Ask them these questions or other questions like these:
- How can we serve you better?
- What do we do in our process/product that causes you issues, challenges and problems?
- What would make us your No. 1 preferred vendor of choice?
Be prepared that price and cost will come up and will be a part of the discussion. You will have to choose how to respond to this question, and you and your team needs to be prepared for how you will respond to this question when it comes up.
Next, talk with some of the internal managers and leadership. A fun place to look is always accounting to see if there are things on which we should focus. Sometimes, the trends can hide the details. So maybe there is an uptick in one area, but there is a downward trend in another area. So the bottom line doesn’t change much, but we probably should look into what is driving the numbers up and down. Other places to look are vendors and purchasing, quality, distribution and warehousing, and sales.
Finally, you should talk with internal team members, informal leaders and managers. There is a wealth of information in every organization if we only take time to ask the question and listen to the answers. Ask the internal members:
- What issues do they struggle with?
- What makes their jobs hard?
- What should we improve?
- What would make them happier to come to work?
- How could we make their particular process more efficient?
Hopefully, you get the idea that you need to sort through and seek out input from several perspectives. The more places you look, the more comprehensive (and meaningful) the list will be. Remember, the driving force behind this is to develop a three-, six-, nine- or 12-month CI plan. Maybe this is an annual planning session to develop the Lean Six Sigma plan for the year.
The point is that you are developing your plan for improving the business in several key areas. This is a serious effort that will to some degree determine where you will spend your time, effort and resources.
Now that we have a plan, or at least a framework for the plan, we must line up the resources necessary to drive that plan and ensure that we will be successful. We need to get the right people around the table to ensure that we have buy-in, and that the leadership team is going to support the plan with resources, support, time and attention. Hopefully, since you have asked them what it is that they want us to accomplish, we have developed a plan that these folks will support. We call this alignment. Alignment means that the team in a company, division or even plant agrees to support the plan and agrees to the initiatives both tactically speaking and strategically. If you have been diligent in reaching out to people and ensuring that their thoughts, ideas and issues are represented, you should have fantastic alignment. If not, you probably have a plan with very little support and one very long year in front of you.
Please realize that while you are talking with different factions of the organization, you are looking for overlap. You are looking for multiple people talking about the same issue. You may be hearing the same issue from several different perspectives. You may hear the accountant talking about how much inventory we are carrying (it is expensive) and the manufacturing manager talking about running out of space. This is probably the same problem from two different directions. The solution(s) to this problem will most likely solve two problems, but it will also be a large problem to tackle. The places where you have the most overlap are where you will have the most alignment and the largest potential for success.
Also, realize that while you hear about a problem, you will have to study and understand the baseline of the situation. Where do we stand now? What is the situation at present day, and what has the trend done over the trailing 12 months (TTM)?
Once you have the plan and the people sitting around the table talking about the plan, look around the room and ask them: “Will you support this plan and help drive the success of this effort?” Until you get a “yes” from each stakeholder, the meeting isn’t done and you are still in the Planning phase of the PDCA cycle. Once you have everyone agreeing to “own and support” the plan, you should be feeling pretty excited about the coming year!
In summary, you have a comprehensive plan for the CI effort. You have reached out to stakeholders both internal and external to the organization to gain buy-in, alignment and ownership. You can articulate what it is you are trying to accomplish in SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) terms. We now have specific targets that we are going for that should yield significant impact to our business. Congratulations!
A few notes in closing …
Hopefully, you have some high level goals and objectives such as:
- Reduce overall cost by 7 percent
- Improve output by 9 percent
- Reduce lead time by 14 percent
- Reduce lost-time accidents by 7 percent
- Improve quality (measured by first-pass yield) by 9 percent
- Improve on-time delivery to John’s House of Widgets by 11 percent
- Reduce inventory on-hand by 10 percent
- Reduce cost of manufacture by 4.5 percent
The next question is how are you going to implement the plan? What should you do next? Where do you start? I will cover it in greater detail on my next blog entry, but the first step is to see where we are currently. You may have heard the phrase “baseline”. Where are we today specifically with the data? Next, we are going to enter into the “Do” phase of the PDCA cycle.
Some potential places to start:
- Value stream map
- Road map
- Scorecard (if the data is the same as the goals and objectives)
- Lean audit (think in terms of the principles of lean that Dr. James Womack outlined in his books)
- Value
- Value stream
- Flow
- Pull
- Culture
The last one may be pretty hard to put together in short term. If you choose that route, ask around to see if you can find a lean audit that you can use without creating one.
Good luck with the planning process to this point. In my next blog, I will talk about executing the plan to drive results.
As always, I welcome your comments and conversation!
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Filed Under: Featured, Featured Category, Lean Manufacturing | Tags: business management, change management, inventory management, Lean Manufacturing, People Management, planning and scheduling, quality, safety, six sigma
