Blackbelts Dream of Sushi

Not only is this week the kick-off of Greenbelt Hybrid, it is also the Supply Chain module for Blackbelt. Yesterday, the class had intensive classroom training in preparation of 4-days of kaizen at a local educational institute. The day wound down to a lean movie night, Jiro Dreams of Sushi complete with a sushi dinner- great training for when the Blackbelts have their Japan module.

Blackbelts engaged in the heijunka (level loading) simulation

 

Blackbelt Guest Speaker, a VP at a local manufacturing company

 

 

It was a beautiful night



Dinner and a movie

 

 

These photos and more are on our Facebook page.

Hybrid

This week at Lean Sensei, we kicked off our first Greenbelt Hybrid course of the year. Last year, we introduced the Hybrid version of Greenbelt, where the worlds of Service and Operations collide.
It was a big hit, so we have two offerings of Hybrid this year in the spring and summer.

You still have a chance to register for Summer Hybrid: http://leansensei.com/register

Module 1             May 12-16

Module 2             June 9-13

Module 3             July 7-11

Here are a few highlights from the first day:

Ooo, looks like the egg didn't make it...

Will this egg be saved?

The tea and coffee simulation demonstrates allows the attendees to experience the difference lean makes in high paced work environments for the ones performing the work and for customers receiving the product

Group photo

 

The CHOP

US In-House Project Wrap-Up

Last week, coach Jake flew into San Jose to work on a customized in-house Lean project for the better part of the week. On Friday, Jake and the team there had their formal report-out. The executive team was in attendance and were very pleased with what was accomplished.

One VP said "[this was] probably the most complex and impressive kaizen I have seen so far"

Great job everyone!

Below is a photo from the daily huddles.



If you would like Lean Sensei to work on a customized in-house project, contact info@leansensei.com

 

 

Where's The Flow?

Lean Sensei coach, Jake is in San Jose working on a customized in-house lean project.

The week started off with Coach Jake teaching the team new lean methodologies. Equipped with new lean tools, the team began the hard of analysing the processes chosen for review. Looking at the flow or sometimes the lack thereof is one of the first questions to ask (learn more about types of flow and why you want it by reading Coach Andrew's article).

The rest of the week, Coach Jake will continue to guide the team in identifying the gap and using that knowledge to create lean solutions that will be maintained by the team.

In-house projects can be virtually any topic you would like addressed at your organization. A few common topics include:

• Supply Chain
• Lean 101
• Lean 201
• Whitebelt training
• Assessement
• Product Development
• Cycle-time-reduction

Call our office at 604-264-1000 to discuss how Lean Sensei can go to you and facilitate a customized in-house project.

Kaizen Time!

Today is day 1 of kaizen for Toronto Greenbelts.
Our host company for this kaizen provides solutions for data transmission, such as satellite terminals. Below are some photos of the teams hard at work.

 

Stay tuned for more updates for this class.

Greenbelt in the West, Greenbelt in the EAST

This week Lean Manager, Bob is braving the cold and facilitating Lean Sensei's Greenbelt in Toronto, Ontario.

The photos below show the class working on teambuilding activities that demonstrate the value of SOPs, yokoten, 7 Wastes or 5S. Several activities are dispersed throughout the classroom portion of the Greenbelt program. The majority of the program will be at a local company, where the teams will have three days to apply the new lean skills and methodologies they have learned.

 

Group Photo!

The First Step of Sustainment... Proper Deployment

The two most common hurdles for lean we have seen are getting buy-in during the initial stages of lean and sustainment once lean has formerly been implemented.

To set yourself up for success on the latter issue, proper deployment of lean is the first step.

On April 1st (no fooling!) we will have a one day Executive Leanbelt course on Lean Deployment. Executive coach, Andrew will facilitate the course.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn what Lean deployment is all about
• Learn how to apply the key concepts of Lean deployment, including Hoshin Kanri (Shared Vision Deployment) and Balanced Scorecard (SC)
• Develop thinking and mindset of a first-class Lean company
• Develop your own Lean deployment framework

  

About Lean Sensei, Executive Coach, Andrew McFadyen

Andrew has over 20 years of Lean experience, including 4 years with Toyota and 15 years with Teleflex (a Tier 1 conglomerate). After becoming a supervisor early in his career, Andrew studied business administration and moved progressively through management and executive positions. Andrew has extensive leadership experience in product and service development, process innovation, and lean operations. He is a highly regarded trainer. Equally comfortable in the boardroom or at the gemba, Andrew has real-world experience that he can easily relate to a wide range of organizations and situations.

 

 

For more information on Lean Deployment, visit our website or email info@leansensei.com

Greenbelt Operations Vancouver Module 2 finishes up with blue skies

What beautiful weather to finish off the week. Spring must surely be around the corner.

The view from our office!

Here at the Lean Sensei headquarters, the Greenbelt Operations Vancouver group completed Module 2 today with a session on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Seeking to learn more about oneself and about team members and how the team interacts is critical to successful team dynamics.

Instructors Hilda and Jake

 

 

Thank you Greenbelts for your hard work this week.

 

 Please keep an eye out next week for a post about the Greenbelt Operations Toronto kick-off.

Lean Sensei's Newsletter Released!

Here at Lean Sensei we have a quarterly newsletter and our issue for the first quarter travelled to inboxes across the globe yesterday.

Newsletter Contents

Coach's Corner, a regular column in our newsletter delves into one specific lean topic. This column is rotated between all of our coaches so you can bet that this column will provide you with a wealth of useful and practical information. This quarter, Executive Coach, Andrew authored the column with a topic on Lean Engagement.

Feature Company is a reoccurring column that comes from interviews with one of the many organizations we are coaching. In this column, the organization shares highlights and learnings from their lean journey. It is a great learning tool and way to learn about other local companies that like you are striving towards becoming world class lean organizations.

Upcoming programs here we showcase our most popular, new or returning by popular demand programs. You can always refer to the calendar on our website for all programs.

We also have occasional contests with great prizes that range from having the honour to name our mascot to free spots to select lean workshops.

Keep on the cutting edge of lean and email info@leansensei.com if you would like to be included in our newsletter (e)mail-outs.

Click here for the online version.

From the Eyes of a Lean Sensei Master Blackbelt: Last day of Florida Benchmarking Tour

Here is a post about the last day of Lean Sensei's Florida Lean Benchmarking Tour written by Master Blackbelt candidate, Brett Hiscock.

Jacksonville Sheriff's Department

Jacksonville’s Sheriff’s Department is the benchmark for Continuous Improvement in Law Enforcement Agencies. They started implementing Lean Principles around 2000. 

 

One of the projects undertaken in 2013 was called CHOP.  It looked at the correlation between low risk offenders who have been arrested or jailed on numerous occasions and being homeless. This program (in pilot now) is offering these individuals the opportunity to have a permanent home with a life coach, substance abuse counsellors as well as mental health counselling if needed. The purpose of this program is to try to break the cycle of repeat offending. If the results prove to be as big as the initial months have shown, this will be put forward for review as a national program.

 

Pilot Pen

Our next stop was Pilot Pens. The plant we visited supplies all pilot pens for the U.S., Northern Mexico and most of Canada. They produce on average 60,000 pens a day and have over 10,000 sku’s. The newest pen on the market is called a friction pen and it is erasable.

Florida Benchmarking Tour Photo Recap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brett Hiscock, CIM, P. Mgr. is a Lean Facilitator and Training Within Industry Instructor at Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters

As part of the Lean Team with the MB CME team, I work with Consortia companies to train, coach and mentor on Lean Manufacturing Principles. I am also responsible for delivering the CME Training Within Industry J-Programs across Canada. Currently, I am working on my Master Blackbelt certification with Lean Sensei International.



 

From the Eyes of a Lean Sensei Master Blackbelt: Florida Benchmarking Tour Day 2

Welcome back David, Jake and team from sunny Florida. Let's keep warm in this snow by recapping the warm memories from the trip. Below Master Blackbelt Candidate, Andrea gives us the summary of the second day of Lean Sensei's Florida Benchmarking Tour.

Mayo Clinic

Today we had two tour stops planned, both in the medical field. Stop number one: The Mayo Clinic

 

It's a big campus with a hospital, education centre, and outpatient clinics. They have been in operation for 150(!) years as a not-for-profit organization, and it is truly an impressive operation. They have only really been at lean management in the last few years at this facility (they have two other clinics in the US), and started with focusing on teamwork, internal communication, and training.

 

They branded their lean initiative "The Culture of Safety" which I thought was very clever... They don't necessarily use the terms "lean" or "continuous improvement" or six sigma" or other words which may make people nervous... However, in the healthcare field, employees care very deeply about their patients and really just want to give them the best care possible. So to use the Safety card to get employees engaged - extremely clever

The focus on safety was a good way to encourage everyone to feel safe to speak out about what could be done to improve patient care, without feeling pressured or afraid. 

This is a common theme, it seems, regardless of industry. People fear raising their hand to ask for help or to point out a problem. 

Why is that? 

Is it culturally-isolated to North America? I don't think so, I have seen it in Europe, China and Japan. 

Is it only front line workers? I don't think so either, I have seen many a c-level employee exhibit this behaviour.

I suspect that it is inherent in everyone to want to please others, and this, coupled with fear of public shame, is what drives this behaviour. Can we learn to manage this response? You bet. But how many employees, supervisors and managers are actually taught anything useful about human behaviour in order to do just that? If they are, it's often only later in their careers. A long time ago, a very good manager of mine (one of my first) told me that "people are messy." She didn't mean it in a bad way but in an honest, let's-face-reality, kind of way. It was her way of saying, sometimes people's lives get messy and it's in no ones best interest to make it worse. I have found that showing true respect for people means that you actually have to respect people's lives including what lies beyond the work day. 

Mayo also had an impressive simulator lab - a dojo - for learning and testing new tools and technologies. It included an amazing digital anatomy table, where you could take real CT scans and spin, slice, add or remove layers. Absolutely fascinating - but imagine what they could use this for in the future? Pre-planning surgeries. Creating custom joint replacement parts (3D printing anyone?). I have to imagine that in my lifetime, everyone will receive regular full body CT scans as part of preventive medicine.

 

Medtronics

Medtronics had decoupled most of their manufacturing processes from their ERP system, and simply replenished what was purchased by customers. They had a small amount of inventory as safety stock, set into a two-bin kanban system (coach Andrews also calls this bin-ban), such that as soon as the first bin was picked and shipped, a trigger was sent to production to replenish the safety stock. When raw materials for production ran low (similar two-bin system), a trigger was sent to purchasing to buy more. So simple. They used heijunka to redirect excess staff to improvement activities, or to overburdened areas. If pick to ship was slow but production was hopping, staff could be moved to where the need was greatest. They also used a simple red card/yellow card for issues - at the line, in each functional area, and cascading up to the value stream level.

Red: needs action

Yellow: actioned with a due date

 

Daily 12-minute huddles only focused on the red cards or overdue yellow cards. 

 

 

 

The thing I like about this approach - as you can see by the picture above - is that the supporting functions realize that if they want to be part of the process (managing and resolving issues that is) they need to actually participate.

In university, I had a chemistry prof who used to joke: "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate" (insert groans here). 

But if you don't participate, you aren't part of the solution. Even if it is messy at times.

 

 

Andrea MacIntosh is the Director of Quality and Continuous Improvement for Alpha Technologies Ltd., a Burnaby, B.C. Organization that provides power system solutions to the information and communication technology, traffic, security, and smart grid/utility  sectors. Andrea has been with Alpha since 2011, before which time she spent ten years in the defence supply sector (subsea technologies, electronics) in various management roles including quality, manufacturing, supply chain and materials, regulatory compliance, industrial security, information technology, and contracts. Prior to that she was a business owner in the software services sector. Her educational background includes a B.Sc. In Physics from the University of British Columbia, and she is currently working on her Master Black Belt in Lean Management.

 

 

The Florida Lean Tour is one of four Lean Benchmarking Tours you can take to complete Lean Sensei Executive Lean Certification. The Executive Leanbelt program allows you to take one to five day workshops on specific lean topics.

 Upcoming Executive courses:

Japan Benchmarking Tour - March 17-21, 2014 (FULL*Inquire for the next date)

Lean Deployment - April 1, 2014

Back by popular demand: Europe Benchmarking Tour - if you are interested, please inquire as we are in the process of setting the date.

 

Visit the Executive Certification page on our website or contact us at:

(604) 264-1000

info@leansensei.com

The Gemba Report: Blackbelt-Made Movie

Below is the movie for created by Dean, Blackbelt candidate for Winter 2014, which was released on Lean Sensei's Facebook page.

Each module of Blackbelt has a dedicated movie director endowed with the responsibility of managing the class movie project for that module.

Next Blackbelt:

Blackbelt VANCOUVER FALL 2014
Lean Strategy & Lean Assessment Module	Sep 22-26
Japan Lean Tour  (flights extra)	Oct 20-23
Lean Supply Chain Module	Nov 17-21
Extreme Makeover Kaizen Module	Dec 8-12

Register at http://leansensei.com/register
Or call our office for more information: 604-264-1000

From the Eyes of a Lean Sensei Master Blackbelt: First Day of Florida Benchmarking Tour

About Lean Sensei's Florida Benchmarking Tour

Not many people know that there is a Lean City right here on our continent. This unassuming city is none other than Jacksonville, Florida. Lean Sensei has specifically chosen to showcase six organizations for the Florida Benchmarking Tour. These companies demonstrate the possibilities when companies make the investment to pursue lean. Attendees of this tour have the opportunity to see first-hand how lean is applied in a wide array of industries.

Below is a post written by one of the attendees of Lean Sensei's Florida Benchmarking Tour, Andrea MacIntosh of Alpha Technologies.

 

We finished up day one of our Lean tour in Jacksonville with a pool-side hansei – and asked the question: “What did everyone take away from our visits today?” “Was there any one thing that stood out, perhaps as something to try at your workplace?” 

We had visited Dr. Bahri, an area dentist who spent many years learning about Lean before trying it in his practice.  After 13 years of reading and learning about Lean processes, he starts with...

 

 

SMED

Yes, SMED - or single minute exchange of die - where one tries to minimize the changeover time between jobs - or in the case of our dentist friend, the setup and changeover time between patients and even multiple operations on a single patient. Not an easy place to start.

In the world of Lean, we are used to newcomers starting with 5S, maybe basic value stream mapping, even heijunka or load leveling. But SMED? Not a typical starting point on the Lean journey due to its sophistication. Nevertheless, it was very interesting to see what he and his staff had done to make significant improvements in a dental practice. Customers were happier; less chairs had to be filled; the waiting room was empty. The doctor had real passion for continuous improvements, particularly those that made his customers happier.

 

For the second half of the day, we visited Saft Batteries, which is housed in an awesome new building.

While this is still a pretty new facility, the team has made huge improvements since ramping up production in 2011.  They have put a very strong Lean people development system in place and they know what to work on next so it looks like Lean will continue to be further entrenched at Saft.

My takeaways from today? Sometimes simpler is better - it is always about the customer - and it is most definitely about the worker and respect for people. 

 

Andrea MacIntosh is the Director of Quality and Continuous Improvement for Alpha Technologies Ltd., a Burnaby, B.C. Organization that provides power system solutions to the information and communication technology, traffic, security, and smart grid/utility  sectors. Andrea has been with Alpha since 2011, before which time she spent ten years in the defence supply sector (subsea technologies, electronics) in various management roles including quality, manufacturing, supply chain and materials, regulatory compliance, industrial security, information technology, and contracts. Prior to that she was a business owner in the software services sector. Her educational background includes a B.Sc. In Physics from the University of British Columbia, and she is currently working on her Master Black Belt in Lean Management.

 

The Florida Lean Tour is one of four Lean Benchmarking Tours you can take to complete Lean Sensei Executive Lean Certification. The Executive Leanbelt program allows you to take one to five day workshops on specific lean topics.

 

Upcoming Executive courses:

Japan Benchmarking Tour - March 17-21, 2014

Lean Deployment - April 1, 2014

 

Back by popular demand: Europe Benchmarking Tour - September 8-12, 2014

 

Visit the Executive Certification page on our website or contact us at:

(604) 264-1000

info@leansensei.com

 

 

F-A-C-I-L-I-T-A-T-E

This is the Kick-off week of our first Service Greenbelt of the year. The class has already learned some of the tools necessary to successfully apply Lean.

Today, the ground rules were officially announced. Yesterday, the class came up with the ground rules as a group, under the facilitation of one of their classmates. This Greenbelt candidate applied Lean Sensei's FACILITATE methodology for effective facilitation- facilitation is much more than simply standing in front of the room and speaking. In fact, only 20% of learning happens from listening. 90% of learning is from doing, therefore the ability of the facilitator to get the group going is vital.

 

It is a rather rainy week for a kick-off....

 

But everyone is in good spirits!

Lean Deployment: how do you successfully deploy Lean… and still embrace vision?

How does transformation help companies become Lean… without hampering idea creation and innovation?

The Lean Deployment program focuses on providing a foundation for shared direction and alignment; It’s about making the difficult, hard choices to clarify what you want to do… or more importantly, what you don’t want to do!
Through this program, participants will learn Lean Deployment methodologies (including Lean Sensei’s proprietary STANDARD tool), the importance of mentoring, Process ownership, Balanced Scorecard and Hoshin Kanri.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn what Lean deployment is all about
• Learn how to apply the key concepts of Lean deployment, including Hoshin Kanri (Shared Vision Deployment) and Balanced Scorecard (SC)
• Develop thinking and mindset of a first-class Lean company
• Develop your own Lean deployment framework

Date

April 1, 2014

Location:

Lean Sensei's training facility

Register

http://leansensei.com/register

More details?

Contact info@leansensei.com