Achieving One-Piece Continuous Flow

Achieving One-Piece Continuous Flow is a workshop designed to enable you to totally eliminate the 8 Kinds of Waste in discrete portions of your Value Stream.  Continuous Flow is the only place in your Value Streams where you have achieved flow with zero waste.  This is the centerpiece of a Lean System, and must be the cornerstone of your Lean Strategy.

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Eight Wastes

A ½ day workshop designed to enable the participants to learn about the 8 Kinds of Waste present in any kind of a traditional enterprise.   These 8 Kinds of Waste were originally described by Mr. Taiichi Ohno, of Toyota, in his book The Toyota Production System, c1988.   In spite of that early revelation, most of us still operate with these 8 Kinds of Waste in our businesses and seem to accept them as normal and inevitable.  This workshop will begin to break our current paradigm and get us into our discomfort zone with regard to these 8 Wastes.

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Five S Workplace Organization

Clutter

5S is one of the easiest Lean Tools to learn and implement. Results are instantaneous! It is also one of the first you should implement in your operations, whether it be shop floor or front office. We have a 5S for Production workshop as well as a 5S for Office workshop.

The 5S’s are:

1. Sort
2. Set-In-Order
3. Shine
4. Standardize
5. Sustain (more…)

Heijunka (Load Leveling)

Heijunka (Load Leveling) is a Japanese term for leveling the production schedule over an interval of time in order to achieve smooth flow and be better synchronized with the actual customer demand.

A basic aspect of Heijunka the “interval” over which you level production.  It’s acronym is EPEI…which means Every Product Every Interval.  The Interval itself can be a month, a week, a day, a shift, or even small increments of time.

Heijunka eliminates muda (waste), mura (unevenness), and muri (unreasonableness) to achieve smooth flow.

A Heijunka Box is actually a simple schedule board that shows the planned production of every part every interval.

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Hoshin Planning

“The Hoshin Plan” is a Lean Tool that, once developed, enables everyone to literally and figuratively be “on the same page” with regard to a Value Stream strategy and implementation plan. The Hoshin Plan is developed by a VS Team, with the VS Leader, who is responsible for the quality of the plan and the integrity of it’s implementation in the VS.

Hoshin Planning is basically a direction-setting and alignment process that results in eveyone in a Value Stream being “on the same page” regarding Vision, Mission, Strategies, Measures, and Activites.   Hoshin Planning results in a Hoshin Plan, which is a living document that provides meaning for all stakeholders in the enterprise:  suppliers, customers, stockholders, employees, and communities.

The Hoshin Plan consists of:

• A VS Vision
• VS Measures of Success
• VS Key Results Areas
• VS Key Results Measures
• VS Key Strategies
• VS Principles of Operation
• VS 90-Day Kaizens (more…)

Kaizen Event (Rapid Improvement)

KAIZEN improvement is a workshop that’ll enable you to effectively plan for, prepare for, execute, and follow-up on any Kaizen Event in your business enterprise.  Kaizen literally means to “take apart & make better”.  Kaizen Events are the vehicle for doing this.   Kaizen Events should always be implemented in the context of a Value Stream and under the direction of a Value Stream Leader.   Kaizen Events are always to be done by a team of people, typically 6-10, who are empowered to make all changes necessary to achieve the Kaizen Event Objectives.

Kaizens are appropriate for the production shop floor, the office, or R+D, Sales, Marketing, etc…..ANY business process that needs rapid improvement.  We have conducted successful Kaizens in manufacturing, engineering, purchasing, warehouses, and entire business processes from RFQs to Accounts Receivable.

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Kaizen Ranking

Kaizen Ranking is a workshop and a tool designed to help you prioritize potential projects based on a set of seven established criteria:

1. Schedule Performance
2. Scrap, Rework, or Repair Cost
3. Impact on Customer Satisfaction
4. Likelihood to Complete in 1 Year
5. Estimated Cost-Benefit of the Project
6. Impact on Process Throughput
7. Impact on Operator Satisfaction

The goal is to identify those vital few Kaizens, which, when completed, will lead to the best results in the time period being planned for.

Learning Objectives:

As a result of completing the Kaizen Ranking workshop, participants will be able to:

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Kanban & Supermarket Pull Scheduling Systems

Pull Scheduling via Kanbans & Supermarkets is an entire system whereby the Customer determines what gets made next and when it gets made. There is no Shop Floor Execution System, as is typically required by MRP (Materials Requirements Planning) & ERP (Enterprise Requirements Planning) “push” scheduling systems. There is no need for a forecast, a shop floor schedule, or for a computer to generate these. There is no need for the infamous morning review meeting, where schedules are reset based on changes from the day before. Instead Supermarkets, Kanbans, Heijunka Boxes, and FIFO Lanes schedule and sequence production based on actual customer demand. As a result, there is far less WIP Inventory and far less Finished Goods Inventory (FGI), and also far less Raw Materials Inventory (RMI) required to conduct the business.

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Lean Capital Project Development

What is LCPD?

Lean Capital Project Development is the specific use of lean principles, combined with the Lean Product Development process (used by Toyota and others), plus the Enneagram life cycle to drive out the wastes in capital projects and achieve:

1) Shorter project development time

2) Better project quality

3) Lower project cost

4) Improved on-time delivery of the project

5) Enhanced quality of work-life for the project team
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Lean Cell (or Work Center) Self-Assessment

Lean Cell (or Work Center) Self-Assessment  provides Cell Teams (or Work Centers) a way of measuring themselves along 20 world-class dimensions of Lean Implementation.   It also provides a way of displaying the current assessment via a Radar Chart.

The 20 dimensions are:

1. Lean Training
2. Value Stream Mapping
3. Hoshin Planning
4. 5S Workplace Organization
5. Visual Controls

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