Sustainable Lean Transformation
How do you go about making productivity gains in your manufacturing processes?
To start you need to look at your processes as a collection of steps that convert the product or perhaps a service from beginning to final stage ready for your customer, calling this a value stream. Speaking of your customer, look through their eyes, how would they define value? Do all the steps you have identified in your value stream create value as defined by your customer or are some steps wasteful? Value stream mapping is used on a regular basis to evaluate the health of your value stream and keep track of improvements. When evaluating with value stream mapping we usually couple the waste identification with stoppages in the flow of information, the flow of materials and the flow of manpower. To help steer us we even give names to waste. These are often refered to as the seven wastes. Many proven strategies exist to eliminate these wastes from the value stream.Are gains in productivty usually sustained?
Sadly, a staggering majority of value stream improvements do not hold their ground over time, let alone become the platform to launch further gains. This is remarkable, given the amount of effort to reach those gains and in most cases the sheer magnitude of those gains. Let’s illustrate with some numbers. During a typical kaizen event your team may be comprised of six team members that may contribute eighty hours (planning, during, follow-up) each. That’s almost 500 manhours! What are typical gains? Well it’s usual to see 50% less floor space required, 70% less time for many activities and elimination of errors. How can we loose ground on such accomplishments? Where is the disconnect?Six Phase Approach
What many are lacking is the foundation and infrastructure that connect individual efforts into a culture of continuous improvement. At InnoView Solutions, we introduce a six phased approach where each phase increases your capacity with support to learn, apply and sustain lean performance.- Develop Compelling Need for Change
- Organize the Primary Value Stream
- Manage the Lean Environment
- Build the Capability
- Standardize Accountability
- Replicate