See Beyond the Horizon

  I was reminded recently by an article from a friend of mine about how organizations often operate outside of reality. Many people fail to recognize that somewhere out there someone is competing with your organization, or preparing to compete with your organization. In both the manufacturing and the service sectors, unless you have a proprietary product, someone is actively pursing your market share. Even if you can hold someone off with a patent, similar competing products are on the horizon. You can choose to ignore this, act arrogantly, etc but it is happening whether you choose to believe it or not. If you work in a government system, you are still in competition. Someone is trying to get your budget dollars. Someone else is trying to privatize your work.  Outside of competition,  customers are demanding more very day.  Think about any product or service you have.  In the last three years or even 3 months have your expectations changed?  Are you not expecting better, cheaper,

  One of the questions we frequently encounter in Lean improvement  is the use of IT to resolve problems. There are many technology applications out there. Aside from the common applications of Microsoft Office, there are applications for scheduling, forecasting, purchasing, accounting, etc. The computer, the internet, and more recently SaaS, has allowed many productivity enhancements to occur through automating the aggregation and disaggregation of data for decision making. And these calculations can be completed in fractions of a second. However, there are many managers out there today that think that an IT application can solve most if not all problems, including money opportunities and improving efficiencies. This 2009 article (granted it's a bit dated) published in EComputer World disputes these claims with some pretty astounding data. The data is specific to the healthcare  sector. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141428/Harvard_study_Computers_don_t_save_hospitals_mon

  Visual Management and the Production Control Board I have encountered many clients who feel that managing visually was busy work. Sometimes management believes  the electronic  tracking system is visual management. And sometimes management has already decided that the staff members could not meaningfully impact the outcome, it was busy work to report progress on an hourly basis. The specific tool I am referring to is known as a process control board. The process control board is designed to show variance from takt time. Takt time is a theoretical calculation the shows the relationship between the time available to do the work, and the volume of work. The inverse of this number yields units of output per hour. Regardless of the capacity of the process, variance from the takt time shows where the opportunities lie. An example of a production control board is shown below.  As a Lean Leader, the question you want to ask is the following, "Is it helpful for the staff to understan

One of the comments I get from management, team members, and even fellow lean consultants is that takt time doesn't apply in many settings including healthcare and admin processes like recruiting.  If we go back to the most basic applications of lean, we are trying to see and eliminate waste (continuously improve), and simultaneously show respect for people. In seeing and eliminating waste in the manufacturing sector, we always begin with the takt time calculation.  Refreshing everyone's mind, takt time is defined as the available time to do the work divided by the volume of work to be done. This theoretical calculation leads to understanding the rhythm of output. The entire lean system runs to this rhythm. Space requirements, kanban inventory levels, staffing levels, shift schedules, and equipment utilization all are determined from the takt time calculation. To presume that space requirements, scheduling assignments, inventory levels, and equipment utlization are not conc