The Lean Journey

Stories of a Lean Ninja...in training....

[lean-ninja]

[lean-ninja]

A project is like a battle......

Analogies are a great way to help complex concepts in simple terms.  I like using concepts that everyone is familiar with when explaining new content to my team members.  

In this case, I used a battle analogy to explain how a project is very similar to a battle regarding what is required to be successful.....Have you ever though how a project is so similar to a battle?  

[lean-ninja]

Hey Lean-Ninja do you spend 100% of your time doing continuous improvement? For instance I am an industrial engineer and continuous improvement is just one of the hats I wear here at work.

Kaizen Ninja, 

I have found that in the service and distribution industry, there are a lot of companies that have dedicated teams that only work on Continuous Improvement.  I belong to one of those teams.   I work in a corporate headquarter with more than 1000 people, 2 divisions, and over 30 functional and sub-functional departments.  I work with each one of those teams when there is a big project.  

Life is not simple when all you do is CI.   Imagine that for every project, I have to learn a new process that I have never touched or heard about it before.... you can't see the process  because it is all done via SQLs and access queries, and you need to become somewhat of an expert to help the teams....So for us is about constantly learning about what others do, and the learning never ends, and you can't get tired of learning, and you have to learn fast.

Because most of the people at my company are not engineers, you don't have a lot of people with analytic skills and training on lean methods, so we have a team that helps support the less-analytic people succeed.  We help them, encourage then, share the pain and gains, and hopefully at the very end, we make them see the light...that this was just one step, and the beginning of a journey that should never end.

[lean-ninja]

Because in the Continuous Improvement world to succeed...You have to be a "Crazy One".....

  Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trou­ble­makers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differ­ently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a labo­ratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Apple's  1997 "Think Different Campaign"

[lean-ninja]

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water (Rabindranath Tagore), just as you can’t fix a process without having worked the process.

[lean-ninja]

SIPOC..........

[lean-ninja]

SIPOC......

When you don’t know where to begin, and how to tackle a project.....whether it is a continuous improvement project, an IT project, a marketing project, or any kind of project, using a SIPOC diagram will quickly help you “see the light” and will help you get on the right track…

When you complete each SIPOC section for the first time, you will realize that you will become a SIPOC addict.  I know I am one, and I use this tool religiously!

A SIPOC diagram is composed of 5 sections:

Supplier: The person, system or tool that provides the information or materials you will need to begin a process

Inputs: The information or materials you receive from the supplier to begin a process

Process: The steps that you take to transform the inputs into an output

Output: The output of a process that will be received by someone or something…

Customer: The recipient of the output

[lean-ninja]

A three tier structure supply chain

[lean-ninja]

Logistics Management

[lean-ninja]

More school work that made me love what I do..........

[lean-ninja]

School work that made me love what I do...........

[lean-ninja]

Santa's supply chain back in 2010.....

[lean-ninja]

The pencil............

[lean-ninja]

Learning to see.....

I guess I am fortunate enough that I get to make a mess everyday at my workplace.  We hang things on the wall, we move them, we color them.  Then we see, and then, we start all over again with blank walls, and brand new sticky notes. 

[lean-ninja]

On Excellence..........

Aristotle once said....~We are what we repeatedly do, excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.~

Needless to say, he was right about it.  Excellence in any form does seldom come overnight, and can never be sustained for a substantial amount of time without practice.

Practice quality,and time is what drives excellence.  If you want to achieve a level of competency in anything, you will have to put your precious time into it, but how you choose to use that time, and how you practice, is what will dictate your level of "excellence."

Invest wisely, and you will succeed.

[lean-ninja]

Go where there is no path......

The science of improvement has many valuable tools, but the science of change requires more than tools and good will.  It requires a unique type of DNA, a will to learn, and a desire to push beyond the current knowledge threshold. 

Go where there is no path and leave a trail......~Emerson

[lean-ninja]

I Think I Got It...........

John Kennedy once said:

"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures."

Not only was he right about peace, but he nailed what Continuous Improvement is all about; the gradual change, removing barriers, and building the new.  And as with peace, Continuous Improvement requires daily involvement, the changes don't happen over night, the barriers are hard to remove, and building the new scares everyone.

And guess what!  Once you get there, you DON'T STOP, but that my friends, it is a whole other topic that we will eventually discuss: Maintain.