Applied with our proven hands-on approach, the Lean Focus Business System™ utilizes a series of structured processes, principles, and tools that will give your business the organizational and cultural infrastructure it takes to deliver sustained, profitable growth. It’s what we call a high-performance culture. To learn more about how each element of the system impacts your business, explore our interactive diagram below. To see the system in action, get in touch.
Select a system to explore, and click each item to learn more.
Growth System
Aspire
Market Segmentation
Strategic growth planning starts with segmentation. How do you define your market? What is your competitive position in the segments you compete in today? Is there opportunity to grow organically through improved differentiation? What key acquisitions would improve your competitive position in the segments you compete in today, or help you enter new desirable markets? This workshop will help you to organize the knowledge and insights you have today, and identify key data gaps to address that will enable you to refine and focus your strategic initiatives to deliver on your growth aspirations.
Market Visibility
You know there is opportunity to increase your market share in strategic segments, but don’t know where to start. This workshop will help to provide a structured approach to closing the gap between the market size you understand that exists, and the portion of that market you can quanitify as served by competitors and customers today. Once the gap is defined, the workshop will help you to define a focused action plan to prioritize and engage strategic segments to refine and operationalize your strategic plan.
Partner Engagement
You have defined a strategic growth opportunity and are launching product and service development initiatives to realize your strategic plan. How do you ensure the investments you make will yield the return and growth you aspire to? This kaizen workshop will help you identify, prioritize, and engage target markets and customers to validate your value proposition and provide feedback through each development milestone, ensuring you are creating compelling value for your target market.
Design Thinking
Market segmentation and partner engagement define the playing field that you will be competing in to drive growth. How will you win? Design thinking provides the framework to understand your target customer’s needs and evolving market trends to formulate key initiatives that will make up the foundation of your strategic planning work.
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is the annual Strategic Planning Process and review that sets the short- and long-term direction for the organization. But have you covered all the bases you need to make clear decision making? Have you narrowed your Strategic Initiatives to the Critical Few? Have you a clear direction in not only “what” you are going to do, but “how” you are going to do it? The Strategic Planning process will allow an organization to go through the critical assessments in order to make fact-based, strategic planning to drive the course of the organization towards competitive breakthrough results.
Strategy Deployment
When you are looking for breakthrough competitive advantage, you are looking for Strategy Deployment! Strategy Deployment builds off your strategic planning process in which you set and drive breakthrough results. Known as Strategy Deployment (aka Hoshin Kanri or Policy Deployment), our Lean Focus approach will guide you through identifying your gaps in your current state to achieve your future goals, whether that be to improve to industry standards, achieve “best-in-class” or “world-class” status, or really change the market with breakthrough competitive advantage.
Discover
Customer Insight 360
Used in the Discover process, Customer Segmentation helps an organization identify opportunities for the highest potential impact to the business in both the short- and long-term strategy, combining analysis with forecasted revenue. You will work with a Commercial Growth Leader who has held a senior Leadership position with P&L responsibility who will understand the ins and outs of meeting revenue targets while driving tactical action plans to produce real results. Customer Segmentation is used when you are using targeted market selection and campaigns, are tackling unpenetrated market opportunities, leveraging your core strengths, a strategic reorganization of the business, or foresee market changes and need to forecast new opportunities.
Ideation System Kaizen
Ideation kaizen is the process and workflow from the needs identification standpoint all the way to the execution of a product or service. You will use Ideation kaizen when you are trying to build breakthrough competitive advantage, build an innovation-based value proposition, reaching new market opportunities, or developing product line extensions.
Product/Technology Roadmaps
Product Roadmaps is a module critical for New Product Development and Management, from both the R&D (Research & Design) and Marketing execution. Road Maps are used when launching new products on-time, new product forecasting, improving coordination between multiple business units, or planning the future pipeline of innovation (i.e. 3-5 years out).
VOC Workshop
An introductory course to VOC techniques to help teams learn and identify different techniques to apply in order to get the feedback needed to drive product/service quality and improvements. The different customer decision-making stage gates and using a cross-functional approach to soliciting feedback to gain valuable working insights in the discovery stages. Can include a hands-on workshop application to a real problem.
Product Portfolio Management
As you compete to gain market share, growth opportunities and new product requests come into your team through many channels and methods. This workshop will enable your team to develop a structured means to triage defined opportunities, synthesize them into a finite set of opportunities, quantify the opportunities, and prioritize resource allocation to execute on the initiatives in the context of alignment to your strategic plan and expected return on your strategic investments.
Product Management Toolkit
As your business grows and evolves, and your strategic initiatives move into the development and deployment stages, product management is critical to ensuring the development team maintains it’s focus on key development priorities, and product introduction, launch, service, and support plans are well defined and synchronized to the development and market introduction stages. This workshop will help you develop and deploy focused action plans to ensure a successful product launch with your sales team and channel partners.
Design
MRD to PRD Workshop
Market requirements and product requirements are often used interchangeably, yet are very different. Does a customer want a 300 HP vehicle, or a vehicle that will go 0-60 MPH in less than 5.0 seconds? Depending on the answer provided, your design team will have a very different solution space to innovate within and provide differentiated solutions. This workshop will help you define the questions to ask to really understand the needs of your customers, and a process to work between your marketing and development teams to translate customer market needs into technical requirements in support of development initiatives.
Lean Product Development
LPD = Lean Product Development is intended to drive faster, shorter development cycles while improving quality and cost efficient products. It takes a simultaneous approach to achieve rapid product development managing these two interests. The goal is to improve time, opportunity costs related to launching new products to market, cost-efficiency, and ultimately driving up competitive advantage. The approach will address concept, development, try-storming improvements, optimizing, standardizing, and executing.
Value Analysis / Value Engineering
Value is determined by the alignment of performance and cost. Value is increased if the customer wants, needs, and is willing to pay for more performance. VAVE, or Value Analysis Value Engineering, is a team approach to analyze value in a product, system or service. You will apply VAVE when you are improving value for competitive purposes, improving successive products (i.e. version 1.0, 2.0, etc.), taking a price cut or increase, or trying to find cost of goods sold improvements.
Product Rationalization
The process of reducing the number of products that you sell in order to invest more in the products that make the most profit: The goal of product rationalization is to reach a maximum number of customers with a minimum number of products in order to maximize revenue for each product. Rationalization is necessary for a company to increase revenue, decrease costs and improve its bottom line.
3P: Product, Process, Plant
The conventional product design approach relies on new products being designed first, then relegated to the rest of the business to carry out. This approach has distinct disadvantages, such as a costly manufacturing process resulting, gaps in talent/skills/assets needed to produce it, launch delays, and disconnect with sales and marketing requirements. However, the 3P Product Design Approach allows a team to design concurrently with business operations in mind, aligning production, preparation and process to be the focus. This results in better product manufacturing, less capital investment upfront, on-time launches, and lower costs for long-term sustainment.
Design for Manufacturing
This module takes an approach to designing products that are easy to manufacture by improving the process for simple assembly, applying poka-yoke (error-proofing) concepts, and simplifying raw materials, suppliers, set-ups and assembly. One would apply this concept when trying to reduce supply chain costs, improving purchasing and forecasting accuracy, error-reduction in assembly, and streamlining and cross-training labor for productivity gains.
Deploy
Accelerated Growth Workshop
AGP = Accelerated Growth Process is a structured process to improve integrated sales and marketing initiatives to identify more customer opportunities and build sales and marketing strategies for higher win rates. It will focus on deep customer understanding, identifying points of differentiation, building and executing measurable sales and marketing programs to build demand, leads and conversion rates.
Omni Channel Workshop
As marketing evolves with the evolution of digital marketing and the sustainment of proven marketing channels, determining the optimal mix of marketing initiatives to maximize reach of your messaging in target segments is critical. This workshop will enable you to segment your target markets, structure and evaluate effectiveness of different initiatives by segment quickly, and hone in on an optimized strategy supporting your growth initiatives.
Sales Funnel Management
Funnel Management is a disciplined process to align an organization’s collective opportunities – size, mix of early and late stage, time lapse between identification and close, win rate – with what is required to successfully achieve or exceed revenue and growth targets. Funnel management requires: sales processes (a common sales language for managing opportunities from identification to close, including associated tools), Standard KPIs and Targets, and a clear Funnel Review Cadence and Process.
Growth Obeya Kaizen
Companies that are able to provide differentiated solutions to customers and segments first will typically have a higher sales funnel close rate versus the competition. This kaizen is focused on leveraging proven obeya and visual management systems to identify, quantify, prioritize, and accelerate the close of key sales opportunities through cross-functional engagement and daily management.
Strategic Pricing
Pricing is the fastest, easiest, and most effective means of increasing profitability when effectively deployed. This workshop will focus on using a combination of segmentation, strategic planning, competitive analysis, and historical product sales trends to define pricing opportunities that will optimize profitability while minimizing competitive loss risk and streamlining your product portfolio.
Sales Excellence Model
Sales teams tend towards conversations about products features, benefits, and pricing but not about business issues. 1/3 of customers are hung up purely on price, but 2/3 are willing to hear your argument. On average 87% of the revenues in complex B2B sales environments are being generated by just 13% of the sales population who create unique value-based selling. Value Selling is a selling skill built around product or service value proposition. Value Selling should be installed when you need to set a clear value proposition differentiated from competition, are engaging a sales team to move beyond price discussions, clear development of long term relationship building with customers, and want to increase and improve sales wins.
Lean System
Safety
Behavior Based Safety Culture
Behavior Based Safety (BBS), is a process that informs management and employees of the overall safety of the workplace through safety observations. BBS is intended to focus workers’ attention on their own and their peers’ daily safety behavior. The goal of BBS program is to improve the employee safety of the organization. When implementing a BBS program, observers (employees trained to conduct on-site safety reviews) conduct reviews of other employees with an eye on their behavior. These observers record safe and unsafe behaviors, in addition to noting safe and unsafe workplace conditions. The observer then shares the findings with the worker and provides feedback. Positive feedback is encouraged. Discussing the ways in which employees can perform their tasks in a safer manner helps workers and observers to become more aware of their behavior.
EH&S Risk Kaizen
The EH&S Risk Kaizen utilizes a 35 point risk assessment (hazard/exposure categories) to identify potential and observed risks in a defined scope of analysis. These risks are prioritized in terms of their probability of occurrence and consequence to the organization, and are put into an action plan for implementation and monitoring, both during and after the kaizen.
Energy & Waste Saver Kaizen
The Energy & Waste Saver Kaizen utilizes an energy/waste audit, to assess how much energy is consumed / waste generated and to evaluate what measures could improve the facility’s energy/waste efficiency. Whether the audit focuses on a whole site or on specific end uses, systems, or processes, it will often find opportunities that may, when implemented or corrected, save significant amounts of energy and money.
Gemba Walks & Layered Process Audits
Layered process audits (LPAs) are a safety technique that focuses on observing and validating preventive measures and workplace hazards. LPAs are not confined to the Safety Department, but involve all employees in the auditing process. Supervisors conduct frequent process audits in their own area, while higher-level managers conduct the same audits less frequently and over a broader range of areas. These audits also typically include integrated corrective and preventative actions taken either during, or, immediately after the audit. Layered process audits (LPAs) help manufacturers and service providers take control of processes, reduce accidents, and, improve both the work environment and the bottom line.
Job-Safety Analysis (JSA)
A JSA is a procedure which helps integrate accepted safety and health principles and practices into a particular task or job operation. In a JSA, each basic step of the job is to identify potential hazards and to recommend the safest way to do the job. Other terms used to describe this procedure are Job-Hazard Analysis (JHA) and job hazard breakdown. Some individuals prefer to expand the analysis into all aspects of the job, not just safety. This approach is known as total job analysis. Methodology is based on the idea that safety is an integral part of every job and not a separate entity. In this document, only health and safety aspects will be considered.
Quality
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Consists of organization-wide efforts to “install and make permanent climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value. “Total” emphasizes that departments in addition to production (for example sales and marketing, accounting and finance, engineering and design) are obligated to improve their operations; “management” emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting.
Built-In Quality System (BIQS)
Built-In Quality System (BIQS) is a systematic approach towards building an operation designed to provide up to the quality standards of your customer with consistency, repeatability, and sustainability. This module will help your team identify current state processes, make and try-storm improvements, and build quality into the process along the way, with a clear deliverable of a sustainable system in place, built and adopted by your associates.
Mistake-Proofing / Jidoka
Mistake-proofing, also known as “poka-yoke,” is intended to prevent or make it impossible for an error to occur or to make it evident that an error has occurred, thus creating a work environment built to perform its intended purpose. Jidoka is one of the Toyota Production System pillars that highlights work to be stopped immediately as soon as a problem occurs (to prevent defects from being passed down the line). This module will help you systematically identify and build improvements to your process to reduce or eliminate mistakes.
Variation-Reduction Kaizen (VRK)
A VRK is an efficient means of achieving an expected output using validated input and process standards. It allows for design of standard work to increase predictability when validated, followed, and sustained (quality, inventory, delivery, etc.). When “noises” are turned into “constants”, it can establish best practice standards for all associates who engage in this process to follow. It allows a measurable standard to be audited against for performance. It allows you to control your controllables!
FMEA Kaizen: System, Design, Process
FMEA stands for Failure Modes Effect Analysis. A Failure Mode is the way a product, component, subassembly, input, or process can fail to perform its intended function, either as a result of an upstream operation or causing a downstream operation to fail. FMEA is a methodology to uncover the contributors to these concerns in the early development of a process or design and facilitate process improvement to prevent failure occurrences. In some cases, FMEA may be required by an applicable Quality Management System Standard (i.e. ISO)
Delivery
Creating Level Pull
Creating Level Pull shows how companies can make the leap to “system kaizen” by introducing a lean production control system that ties together the flows of information and materials supporting every product family in a facility.
Making Materials Flow
After implementing flow and pull in the plant, Making Materials Flow takes the next step by explaining how to supply purchased parts to the value stream in order to support continuous flow. Making Materials Flow explains in plain language how to create such a system by applying the relevant concepts and methods in a step-by-step progression.
Dynamic Kanban & PFEP
A Kanban system is meant to help maintain inventory levels using a visual “pull” system that signals production and delivery as material is consumed. A Kanban system is highly visual and tracked through a replenishment cycle, with a constant flow of production and inventory to meet demand in real time while keeping inventory levels low.
Heijunka (Level-Loading)
Heijunka = sequencing of production or level-loading. Heijunka focuses on the distribution between production volume and product mix evenly over time, or the level-loading of work to meet demand. Typically used in combination with other Lean principles to stabilize process flow, it converts uneven customer “pull” into even, more predictable manufacturing processes.
SIOP Process
SIOP = Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning. A business process that provides management the ability to strategically direct its business to achieve competitive advantage on a continuous basis. It aligns the different functions involved in the forecasting of demand to delivery process: Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations. The process is performed at least monthly, brings together all functional plans, and reconciles, supply, demand, and new product plans. This module will help an organization implement a rigorous SIOP process.
Cost
Rapid Plant Analysis
The Analysis Approach, also referred to as Rapid Plant Analysis, gives an insight and road map for the critical opportunities for improvement throughout all aspects of the organization (manufacturing, operations, back-office, etc.). The team will work with on-site resources to assess critical value streams, observe work processes, drill into data sets, and result in a customized project list and improvements (savings or returns) with an ultimate road map for how the organization can achieve its targets.
Footprint Rationalization
Footprint rationalization is a way to dramatically reduce costs and improve operations by optimizing a company’s manufacturing footprint. This optimization could include any combination of equipment moves, volume transfers and plant rationalizations. When implemented effectively, footprint rationalization drives major, measurable improvements in operating and financial performance. Footprint rationalization also allows companies to significantly reduce supply chain cost and complexity, increase utilization and improve EBIT.
Total Productive Maintenance
TPM = Total Productive Maintenance. This is an installed system to maintain and improve the performance of your production and quality assets (i.e. machinery, equipment, process workflow, resources) to drive value-added activities. TPM will focus on the demand at which the business operates against the maintenance and scheduling needed to drive performance, thus avoiding one of the wastes of downtime that can occur from breakdowns or delays.
Setup Reduction
Set-up time is the time it takes to change equipment from the last good part of the previous production lot to the first good part of the subsequent production lot. If you think in terms of a race car and how the crew acts during a pit stop, the mission is to create shorter setup times, more frequent setups to reduce lead times to improve cost, quality and delivery by reducing inventory, direct labor, and space. The Set-up Reduction module (also known as SMED = Single Minute Exchange of Die) will help your team identify and implement Set-up Reductions.
Creating Continuous Flow
Creating Continuous Flow takes you to the next level in work cell design where you’ll achieve even greater cost and lead time savings. You’ll learn:
-Where to focus your continuous flow efforts
-How to create much more efficient work cells and lines
-How to operate a pacemaker process so that a lean value stream is possible
-How to sustain the gains, and keep improving
Leadership System
Business
Mission, Vision, Values Process
Our MVV Process is designed to deliver an aligned Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Set of Core Values. These are the cornerstones of Transforming Company Culture.
Business Operating Rhythm
Business Operating Rhythm is more than just a monthly meeting. If your current state operations review appears as a “Show and Tell” and less about driving results, let Lean Focus help you identify your critical core value drivers, cadence, action plan design, KPIs (key performance indicators), and review agendas to drive real results.
Breakthrough Kaizen Week
This Kaizen week is identified at the organization’s highest level (i.e. President’s Kaizen, Breakthrough Kaizen) which allows for senior leadership to participate in highest level and critical Value Stream kaizen events in one week. Multiple Kaizens can be conducted during one week, with the aim to achieve breakthrough results while engaging the participation of Senior Leaders.
Leading the Lean Transformation
As a Leader in an organization, you are the most critical to drive the direction, culture, and performance by your team. Leading a full- or partial-scale Lean Transformation will take understanding, patience, and diligence. Through this 1-day course, you will be exposed to the most critical Leadership elements needed in order to adopt, implement, and sustain a thriving Lean culture.
Due Diligence & Acquisition Integration
In a merger or acquisition, due diligence and a plan for integration from one organization into another requires a high level of expertise, insights, and planning on the front end. Lean Focus’ team and leadership are highly trained and knowledgeable in the requirements of thorough Due Diligence processes, identifying key focus areas, risk management, and post-acquisition planning.
Culture
Lean Culture Diagnostic
The Lean Culture Diagnostic assesses the lean maturity of an organization looking at 5 Elements of a High Performing Culture and 14 Guiding Principles (Ways of Working). Most importantly, the assessment uses “gap” analysis to identify high-payoff improvement opportunities that can lead to an action plan.
Engagement Process
This process is designed to define and drive employee engagement in the Transformation. The focus is on involving all levels of organization in the transformation and measuring the impact to core business KPI’s.
CI Leader Bootcamp
Continuous Improvement Leaders need to practice what they preach, meaning continuous improvement and learning is a continuous process! During the CI Leader Boot Camp week, leaders will get hands-on training on how to prepare, execute, and sustain kaizen events, learn critical skills for driving involvement and engagement of participants to drive results, and ultimately, best practices for building a strong C.I. culture throughout the organization.
Lean Foundation Bootcamp
Overview of the drivers of a successful lean transformation. Intensive hands-on work with lean tools in flow, standard work, 6S/VM, pull, daily management, leadership gemba walks, value stream mapping, A3 problem solving, and strategy deployment. This is an intensive hands-on workshop using the client’s real situations to accelerate learning.
Building a Lean Business System
What’s the secret behind successful companies like Toyota, Ford, Danaher, and John Deere? They’ve each built a strong performance culture using a successful Operating or Business System rollout. This course teaches you how to build the systems necessary to create a culture that drives performance, sets expectations, reduces waste, and ultimately, delivers results.
Talent
Talent Management Process
Do you have the right talent to achieve your goals today? Do you have the right “bench” to step up to bat if any of your talent were to leave? These are tough questions that an organization must be prepared to answer in today’s competitive employment marketplace. Our Talent Search team will support your organization in not only identifying a game plan for today’s players but also building the “bench” of future star players.
Organizational Readiness Process
At the core of driving an Organization’s Vision, Mission, and Culture, is the talent and infrastructure of resources to support it. Through a rigorous Organization Review and Strategy development process, an organization can construct its resources, people, and reporting layers to drive the results it needs. The deliverable here is to enable competing by design.
Performance Management Process
Performance Management and Development is a critical pathway to ensure that your associates’ performance and development is tied to the strategic direction and vision of the company, while also ensuring engagement for retention. Our Talent Search team will guide your organization through the process and installment of a Performance Management program along with the action plan to install and ensure sustainment to drive results.
Leadership Development Process
Developing emerging leadership talent is vital to sustainable growth. Our LDP process delivers a structure to how to bring talent along in their development journey. It also provides for a level setting on how all leaders should lead in an organization
Reward & Recognition Process
What gets measured gets done, what gets rewarded builds a culture. Our R&R process helps the organization align compensation and reward with the results and values of he company in order to further strengthen the culture.
Foundation
8 Wastes & 3Ms
This module helps teams identify the difference between what is value added to a product/service/final deliverable and what is not value added. In order to improve the work processes, one must eliminate the 8 wastes and the 3Ms = Muda (waste), Mura (unevenness), Muri (Forcibly).
Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
A Value Stream is a key business process that adds value to a product or service. Value Stream Mapping allows you to identify the Current State of your key value stream, identify wastes in your processes, and use real data to identify measurable targets for improvements. A Value Stream Mapping exercise allows you to visualize the “big picture” of a high level process and identify key “kaizen” event improvements to target to improve the process towards a measurable Future State.
Kaizen Event Process
Kaizen involves breaking down a process, removing any unnecessary elements, and then putting it back together in a new and improved way. The process should now work more smoothly and fully utilize the skill sets of everyone involved. A kaizen event is a five-day team workshop with a specific goal or set of goals for an area that needs improvement. This event will be led by a team leader and will include training, data collection, brainstorming, and implementation. At the end of the event, the team leader will create a follow-up plan and a report to be submitted to management. Many people are familiar with the term “kaizen”, which is Japanese for “change for better”. In business, kaizen refers to any activities that improve the function of a process.
6S & Visual Management
One of the critical elements towards a Lean working environment is an emphasis on Safety, while creating a Visual Control in order to satisfy other critical requirements of the business, such as Quality, Delivery, Inventory, Productivity, and Engagement. 6S, which stands for “Safety, Sort, Set-in-Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain” is a framework for creating a visual, controlled environment to deliver products/services at an expected output level. This module will review the requirements and installment for a sustainable culture using 6S and Visual Controls.
Problem-Solving System
Often times, teams and companies will find themselves firefighting the same problems over and over again or are stuck as to how to resolve a problem. Most often, a problem is poorly defined or nebulous in nature! Associates will gain experience with our proprietary Problem-Solving System (PS2) using real problems brought in as pre-work and provided case studies. Skill development will be the focus for the 2 days, where you will learn AND apply new and unique approaches to solving problems such as: developing your “burning platform,” clearly and succinctly defining your problem, and breaking down your problem into its largest causal contributors.
Standard Work / Leader Standard Work
This program will train on concepts of Standard Work and apply to a real live problem at the client site. Final deliverables will include SW confirmed and finalized, associates trained on the new SW, and a Leadership report out of impact to gap.
Transactional Process Improvement (TPI)
Once improvement priorities are identified (typically identified in a Value Stream Map), TPI is one tool Lean Focus uses to help clients build stronger processes and tools. It helps identify the more detailed level process mapping in its current state, identifying process breakdowns, try-storming new improvements, and implementing towards a future state with clear, measurable deliverables and impact to the process.
Daily Management
Daily Management is the most important tool/process in a successful lean transformation. Daily problem-solving across key performance metrics in the various business functions will enable the business to achieve its strategic objectives over the long term. Real business results will be realized during this event.
Visual Project Management
A Visual Project Management module will help your team with a project that may require cross-functional participants, significant resources, and/or longer term project management with a clear timeline for delivery. An Obeya Room (meaning “big room” in Japanese) is utilized to bring together critical resources that drive the “project” forward, used to house the daily management, reviews, and problem-solving needed to drive a project forward according to expected timelines.
Guiding Principles
Kaizen Mindset
Change is a constant force—use it to your advantage. By adopting a mindset of continuous improvement, you and your teams can increase focus and performance. Utilize Kaizen tools and cross-functional consensus-building to align your organization and drive results.
Continuous Flow
Processes should be balanced to flow at the rate of demand of the customer (internal or external)—meaning material, information, people, machines, and methods should flow un-interrupted. This extends to all pieces of the value stream, including suppliers and customers in pursuit of perfection and the ideal lot size of 1. If there are obstacles or barriers to this, remove them using waste elimination.
Create Pull
If push means top down forcing or exertion, pull means pulling something at the time it is needed. As a principle, all processes should be connected via pull systems with clear signals. Pull systems improve process and workflow, preventing bottlenecks and inventory logjams. Pull can also create followership, where associates willingly want to participate, support, or own a responsibility.
Level the Work
Leveling the workload so there are no unreasonable burdens placed on any one person, team, or machine can reduce inventory strain, increased discounting, call abandonment, and overtime incurred. This requires smoothing the sales funnel process throughout the quarter to even demand finding. The goal is to strike a balance between flexibility, stability, and predictability, also known as ‘Heijunka’.
Stop & Fix
Instead of putting out fires when they flare up‚ stop and fix the root cause problem. This will avoid costly workarounds and flawed solutions. But don’t stop there; make it OK to share problems publicly. Dedicate time, resources, and support behind problem-solving. This will enable you to build a problem-solving mindset which will give your teams the tools they need to address issues properly—and prevent them from happening again.
Standardize Work
First, clarify the process. Then, standardize and document the best-known way to ensure a consistent outcome. Make sure to oversee critical moments such as onboarding & training to ensure procedures are being taught/adopted correctly. Finally, outline standards for improvement.
Visualize Problems
Make it easy to spot problems by making them visual. That way you can quickly see where you are winning and losing—and if you’re not winning, you can quickly identify why. But this can only happen if you make it safe and acceptable to expose problems in the first place—encourage it.
Mind vs. Wallet
Take a mind-first approach to budgetary decisions by seeking solutions that are already within your control; identify existing resources to get the job done. Reallocate resources based on prioritization and impact. Spend the company’s money as if it were your own; smarter, not harder. And if a large investment is needed, think hard about it—will it achieve your goal in the time you expect?
Leaders Teach
The best demonstration of comprehension is when one can teach. That’s why true leaders lead from the frontline as teachers & experts in the culture & tools. That way, employees learn by doing, at Gemba.
Develop People
High-performing cultures invest in people development, with emphasis on leveraging their strengths. Per studies done by Gallup, work groups that implemented a strengths-based development intervention saw:
>10-19% increase in sales
>14-29% increase in profit
>3-7% increase in engaged customers
>9-15% increase in engaged employees
>6-72-point decrease in turnover
>22-59% decrease in safety incidents
Respect Others
Per Harvard Business Review studies, employees that got respect from their leaders reported better health & well-being, more trust & safety, greater enjoyment & satisfaction with their jobs, greater focus & prioritization, and said they were more likely to stay with their organization than those that didn’t. Which means respect of roles, diversity, and values needs to be more than just lip service, it needs to be demonstrated in action. Only once you build an inclusive team will you be able to tap into your team’s full potential.
Go See Yourself
Don’t take someone else’s word for it. Going to Gemba (where the work is done) and seeing things for yourself helps to visualize the problem & see if process is followed. Gemba walks should be scheduled, consistent, and built into the culture to reinforce leading by example & continuous improvement values.
Eliminate Waste
Eliminating waste is a never-ending journey to identify and eliminate or greatly reduce “The 8 Wastes.” One way to do this is build poka-yoke (error-proofing) into processes that reduce barriers and improve workflow.
High Expectations
To set high expectations, you first need to understand what is and isn’t achievable based historical data, forecasted data, and current resources. Once the bar has been set, align your organization behind those critical KPIs and hold your associates (and yourself) accountable to driving those results & stretching performance. Provide coaching and feedback along the way to ensure those results are realized.
Select a system to explore, and hover over each item to learn more.
Growth System
The Growth System is a collection of structured processes and tools that allow companies to create sustainable competitive advantage by driving above-market organic growth. The four main aspects of the Growth System include: Aspire, Discover, Design, and Deploy.
Aspire
Aspire
From segmentation to strategic execution, these tools give you the ability to understand how your customers will respond to your targeted business strategies.
Market Segmentation
Strategic growth planning starts with segmentation. How do you define your market? What is your competitive position in the segments you compete in today? Is there opportunity to grow organically through improved differentiation? What key acquisitions would improve your competitive position in the segments you compete in today, or help you enter new desirable markets? This workshop will help you to organize the knowledge and insights you have today, and identify key data gaps to address what will enable you to refine and focus your strategic initiatives to deliver on your growth aspirations.
Market Visibility
You know there is opportunity to increase your market share in strategic segments, but don’t know where to start. This workshop will help to provide a structured approach to closing the gap between the market size you understand that exists, and the portion of that market you can quantify as served by competitors and customers today. Once the gap is defined, the workshop will help you to define a focused action plan to prioritize and engage strategic segments to refine and operationalize your strategic plan.
Partner Engagement
You have defined a strategic growth opportunity and are launching product and service development initiatives to realize your strategic plan. How do you ensure the investments you make will yield the return and growth you aspire to? This Kaizen workshop will help you identify, prioritize, and engage target markets and customers to validate your value proposition and provide feedback through each development milestone, ensuring you are creating compelling value for your target market.
Design Thinking
Market segmentation and partner engagement define the playing field that you will be competing in to drive growth. How will you win? Design thinking provides the framework to understand your target customer’s needs and evolving market trends to formulate key initiatives that will make up the foundation of your strategic planning work.
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is the annual strategic planning process and review that sets the short- and long-term direction for the organization. But have you covered all the bases you need to make clear decision making? Have you narrowed your strategic initiatives to the critical few? Do you have a clear direction in not only “what” you are going to do, but “how” you are going to do it? The strategic planning process will allow an organization to go through the critical assessments in order to make fact-based, strategic planning to drive the course of the organization towards competitive breakthrough results.
Strategy Deployment
When you are looking for breakthrough competitive advantage, you are looking for Strategy Deployment! Strategy Deployment builds off your strategic planning process in which you set and drive breakthrough results. Known as Strategy Deployment (aka Hoshin Kanri or Policy Deployment), our Lean Focus approach will guide you through identifying your gaps in your current state to achieve your future goals, whether that be to improve to industry standards, achieve “best-in-class” or “world-class” status, or really change the market with breakthrough competitive advantage.
Discover
Discover
A customer-centric approach to gather and interpret customer insights, as well as go-to market strategies that delight customers and create competitive separation.
Customer Insight 360 & VOC
Used in the Discover process, customer segmentation helps an organization identify opportunities for the highest potential impact to the business in both the short- and long-term strategy, combining analysis with forecasted revenue. You will work with a Commercial Growth Leader who has held a senior Leadership position with P&L responsibility who will understand the ins and outs of meeting revenue targets while driving tactical action plans to produce real results. Customer Segmentation is used when you are using targeted market selection and campaigns, are tackling unpenetrated market opportunities, leveraging your core strengths, a strategic reorganization of the business, or foresee market changes and need to forecast new opportunities.
Ideation System Kaizen
Ideation Kaizen is the process and workflow from the needs identification standpoint all the way to the execution of a product or service. You will use ideation Kaizen when you are trying to build breakthrough competitive advantage, build an innovation-based value proposition, reach new market opportunities, or develop product line extensions.
Product/Technology Roadmaps
Product Roadmaps is a module critical for new product development and management, from both the R&D (Research & Design) and marketing execution. Road Maps are used when launching new products on-time, new product forecasting, improving coordination between multiple business units, or planning the future pipeline of innovation (i.e. 3-5 years out).
VOC Workshop
An introductory course to VOC techniques to help teams learn and identify different techniques to apply in order to get the feedback needed to drive product/service quality and improvements. The different customer decision-making stage gates and using a cross-functional approach to soliciting feedback to gain valuable working insights in the discovery stages. Can include a hands-on workshop application to a real problem.
Product Portfolio Management
As you compete to gain market share, growth opportunities and new product requests come into your team through many channels and methods. This workshop will enable your team to develop a structured means to triage defined opportunities, synthesize them into a finite set of opportunities, quantify the opportunities, and prioritize resource allocation to execute on the initiatives in the context of alignment to your strategic plan and expected return on your strategic investments.
Product Management Toolkit
As your business grows and evolves, and your strategic initiatives move into the development and deployment stages, product management is critical. Not only does it ensure the development team maintains its focus on key development priorities, it ensures the product introduction, launch, service, and support plans are well defined and synchronized with the development and market introduction stages. This workshop will help you develop and deploy focused action plans to ensure a successful product launch with your sales team and channel partners.
Design
Design
The rapid-design processes that accelerate product development time-to-market and support customers’ needs.
MRD to PRD Workshop
Market requirements and product requirements are often used interchangeably, yet are very different. Does a customer want a 300 HP vehicle, or a vehicle that will go 0-60 MPH in less than 5.0 seconds? Depending on the answer provided, your design team will have a very different solution space to innovate within and provide differentiated solutions. This workshop will help you define the questions to ask to really understand the needs of your customers, and a process to work between your marketing and development teams to translate customer market needs into technical requirements in support of development initiatives.
Lean Product Development
LPD = Lean Product Development is intended to drive faster, shorter development cycles while improving quality and cost efficient products. It takes a simultaneous approach to achieve rapid product development managing these two interests. The goal is to improve time, opportunity costs related to launching new products to market, cost-efficiency, and ultimately driving up competitive advantage. The approach will address concept, development, try-storming improvements, optimizing, standardizing, and executing.
Value Analysis / Value Engineering
Value Analysis / Value Engineering
Value is determined by the alignment of performance and cost. Value is increased if the customer wants, needs, and is willing to pay for more performance. VAVE, or Value Analysis Value Engineering, is a team approach to analyze value in a product, system or service. You will apply VAVE when you are improving value for competitive purposes, improving successive products (i.e. version 1.0, 2.0, etc.), taking a price cut or increase, or trying to find cost of goods sold improvements.
Product Rationalization
The process of reducing the number of products that you sell in order to invest more in the products that make the most profit: The goal of product rationalization is to reach a maximum number of customers with a minimum number of products in order to maximize revenue for each product. Rationalization is necessary for a company to increase revenue, decrease costs and improve its bottom line.
3P: Product, Process, Plant
The conventional product design approach relies on new products being designed first, then relegated to the rest of the business to carry out. This approach has distinct disadvantages, such as a costly manufacturing process resulting, gaps in talent/skills/assets needed to produce it, launch delays, and disconnect with sales and marketing requirements. However, the 3P Product Design Approach allows a team to design concurrently with business operations in mind, aligning production, preparation and process to be the focus. This results in better product manufacturing, less capital investment upfront, on-time launches, and lower costs for long-term sustainment.
Design for Manufacturing
This module takes an approach to designing products that are easy to manufacture by improving the process for simple assembly, applying poka-yoke (error-proofing) concepts, and simplifying raw materials, suppliers, set-ups and assembly. One would apply this concept when trying to reduce supply chain costs, improving purchasing and forecasting accuracy, error-reduction in assembly, and streamlining and cross-training labor for productivity gains.
Deploy
Deploy
The go-to-market processes and tools used to improve sales and marketing productivity and effectiveness.
Accelerated Growth Workshop
AGP = Accelerated Growth Process is a structured process to improve integrated sales and marketing initiatives to identify more customer opportunities and build sales and marketing strategies for higher win rates. It will focus on deep customer understanding, identifying points of differentiation, building and executing measurable sales and marketing programs to build demand, leads, and conversion rates.
Omni Channel Workshop
As marketing evolves with the evolution of digital marketing and the sustainment of proven marketing channels, determining the optimal mix of marketing initiatives to maximize reach of your messaging in target segments is critical. This workshop will enable you to segment your target markets, structure and evaluate effectiveness of different initiatives by segment quickly, and hone in on an optimized strategy supporting your growth initiatives.
Sales Funnel Management
Funnel Management is a disciplined process to align an organization’s collective opportunities – size, mix of early and late stage, time lapse between identification and close, win rate – with what is required to successfully achieve or exceed revenue and growth targets. Funnel management requires: sales processes (a common sales language for managing opportunities from identification to close, including associated tools), Standard KPIs and Targets, and a clear Funnel Review Cadence and Process.
Growth Obeya Kaizen
Companies that are able to provide differentiated solutions to customers and segments first will typically have a higher sales funnel close rate versus the competition. This Kaizen is focused on leveraging proven Obeya and visual management systems to identify, quantify, prioritize, and accelerate the close of key sales opportunities through cross-functional engagement and daily management.
Strategic Pricing
Pricing is the fastest, easiest, and most effective means of increasing profitability when effectively deployed. This workshop will focus on using a combination of segmentation, strategic planning, competitive analysis, and historical product sales trends to define pricing opportunities that will optimize profitability while minimizing competitive loss risk and streamlining your product portfolio.
Sales Excellence Model
Sales teams tend towards conversations about products features, benefits, and pricing but not about business issues. 1/3 of customers are hung up purely on price, but 2/3 are willing to hear your argument. On average 87% of the revenues in complex B2B sales environments are being generated by just 13% of the sales population who create unique value-based selling. Value Selling is a selling skill built around product or service value proposition. Value Selling should be installed when you need to set a clear value proposition differentiated from competition, are engaging a sales team to move beyond price discussions, clear development of long term relationship building with customers, and want to increase and improve sales wins.
Lean System
The Lean System is a set of proven, Lean manufacturing tools that are deployed in a systematic manner to deliver breakthrough results in Safety, Quality, Delivery, Inventory, and Productivity. The four main aspects of the Lean System are: Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost.
Safety
Safety
Establishing an effective safety culture means creating a shared set of values, beliefs, and behaviors around safety that employees can support and cultivate through workplace process improvement.
Behavior Based Safety Culture
Behavior Based Safety (BBS), is a process that informs management and employees of the overall safety of the workplace through safety observations. BBS is intended to focus workers’ attention on their own and their peers’ daily safety behavior. The goal of BBS program is to improve the employee safety of the organization. When implementing a BBS program, observers (employees trained to conduct on-site safety reviews) conduct reviews of other employees with an eye on their behavior. These observers record safe and unsafe behaviors, in addition to noting safe and unsafe workplace conditions. The observer then shares the findings with the worker and provides feedback. Positive feedback is encouraged. Discussing the ways in which employees can perform their tasks in a safer manner helps workers and observers to become more aware of their behavior.
EH&S Risk Kaizen
The EH&S Risk Kaizen utilizes a 35 point risk assessment (hazard/exposure categories) to identify potential and observed risks in a defined scope of analysis. These risks are prioritized in terms of their probability of occurrence and consequence to the organization, and are put into an action plan for implementation and monitoring, both during and after the Kaizen.
Energy & Waste Saver Kaizen
The Energy & Waste Saver Kaizen utilizes an energy/waste audit, to assess how much energy is consumed / waste generated and to evaluate what measures could improve the facility’s energy/waste efficiency. Whether the audit focuses on a whole site or on specific end uses, systems, or processes, it will often find opportunities that may, when implemented or corrected, save significant amounts of energy and money.
Gemba Walks & Layered Process Audits
Gemba Walks & Layered Process Audits
Layered Process Audits (LPAs) are a safety technique that focuses on observing and validating preventive measures and workplace hazards. LPAs are not confined to the Safety Department, but involve all employees in the auditing process. Supervisors conduct frequent process audits in their own area, while higher-level managers conduct the same audits less frequently and over a broader range of areas. These audits also typically include integrated corrective and preventative actions taken either during, or, immediately after the audit. Layered process audits (LPAs) help manufacturers and service providers take control of processes, reduce accidents, and, improve both the work environment and the bottom line.
Job-Safety Analysis (JSA)
A JSA is a procedure which helps integrate accepted safety and health principles and practices into a particular task or job operation. In a JSA, each basic step of the job is to identify potential hazards and to recommend the safest way to do the job. Other terms used to describe this procedure are Job-Hazard Analysis (JHA) and job hazard breakdown. Some individuals prefer to expand the analysis into all aspects of the job, not just safety. This approach is known as total job analysis. Methodology is based on the idea that safety is an integral part of every job and not a separate entity. In this document, only health and safety aspects will be considered.
Quality
Quality
Ensuring a focus on quality from internal and external stakeholders, which can be achieved by assessing risk, applying basic quality systems, mistake-proofing, and reducing variation.
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM consists of organization-wide efforts to install and make permanent climates where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value. “Total” emphasizes that departments in addition to production (for example sales and marketing, accounting and finance, engineering and design) are obligated to improve their operations; “management” emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting.
Built-In Quality Systems (BIQS)
Built-In Quality Systems (BIQS)
BIQS is a systematic approach towards building an operation designed to provide up to the quality standards of your customer with consistency, repeatability, and sustainability. This module will help your team identify current state processes, make and try-storm improvements, and build quality into the process along the way, with a clear deliverable of a sustainable system in place, built and adopted by your associates.
Mistake-Proofing / Jidoka
Mistake-proofing, also known as “poka-yoke,” is intended to prevent or make it impossible for an error to occur or to make it evident that an error has occurred, thus creating a work environment built to perform its intended purpose. Jidoka is one of the Toyota Production System pillars that highlights work to be stopped immediately as soon as a problem occurs (to prevent defects from being passed down the line). This module will help you systematically identify and build improvements to your process to reduce or eliminate mistakes.
Variation-Reduction Kaizen (VRK)
Variation-Reduction Kaizen (VRK)
A VRK is an efficient means of achieving an expected output using validated input and process standards. It allows for design of standard work to increase predictability when validated, followed, and sustained (quality, inventory, delivery, etc.). When “noises” are turned into “constants”, it can establish best practice standards for all associates who engage in this process to follow. It allows a measurable standard to be audited against for performance. It allows you to control your controllables!
FMEA Kaizen: System, Design, Process
FMEA Kaizen: System, Design, Process
FMEA stands for Failure Modes Effect Analysis. A Failure Mode is the way a product, component, subassembly, input, or process can fail to perform its intended function, either as a result of an upstream operation or causing a downstream operation to fail. FMEA is a methodology to uncover the contributors to these concerns in the early development of a process or design and facilitate process improvement to prevent failure occurrences. In some cases, FMEA may be required by an applicable Quality Management System Standard (i.e. ISO).
Delivery
Delivery
Ensuring a proper level of flow and pull systems are in place to satisfy delivery requirements for customers, optimizing on-hand inventories, while reducing and eliminating waste.
Creating Level Pull
Creating Level Pull shows how companies can make the leap to “system Kaizen” by introducing a Lean production control system that ties together the flows of information and materials supporting every product family in a facility.
Making Materials Flow
After implementing flow and pull in the plant, Making Materials Flow takes the next step by explaining how to supply purchased parts to the value stream in order to support continuous flow. Making Materials Flow explains in plain language how to create such a system by applying the relevant concepts and methods in a step-by-step progression.
Dynamic Kanban & PFEP
A Kanban system is meant to help maintain inventory levels using a visual “pull” system that signals production and delivery as material is consumed. A Kanban system is highly visual and tracked through a replenishment cycle, with a constant flow of production and inventory to meet demand in real time while keeping inventory levels low.
Heijunka (Level-Loading)
Heijunka = sequencing of production or level-loading. Heijunka focuses on the distribution between production volume and product mix evenly over time, or the level-loading of work to meet demand. Typically used in combination with other Lean principles to stabilize process flow, it converts uneven customer “pull” into even, more predictable manufacturing processes.
SIOP Process
SIOP = Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning. A business process that provides management the ability to strategically direct its business to achieve competitive advantage on a continuous basis. It aligns the different functions involved in the forecasting of demand to delivery process: Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations. The process is performed at least monthly, brings together all functional plans, and reconciles, supply, demand, and new product plans. This module will help an organization implement a rigorous SIOP process.
Cost
Cost
Getting control over and reducing costs by: improving labor efficiency, machine utilization, eliminating waste, controlling overhead costs, and reducing carrying costs.
Rapid Plant Analysis
The Analysis Approach, also referred to as Rapid Plant Analysis, gives an insight and road map for the critical opportunities for improvement throughout all aspects of the organization (manufacturing, operations, back-office, etc.). The team will work with on-site resources to assess critical value streams, observe work processes, drill into data sets, and result in a customized project list and improvements (savings or returns) with an ultimate road map for how the organization can achieve its targets.
Footprint Rationalization
Footprint Rationalization is a way to dramatically reduce costs and improve operations by optimizing a company’s manufacturing footprint. This optimization could include any combination of equipment moves, volume transfers and plant rationalizations. When implemented effectively, Footprint Rationalization drives major, measurable improvements in operating and financial performance. Footprint rationalization also allows companies to significantly reduce supply chain cost and complexity, increase utilization and improve EBIT.
Total Productive Maintenance
TPM = Total Productive Maintenance. This is an installed system to maintain and improve the performance of your production and quality assets (i.e. machinery, equipment, process workflow, resources) to drive value-added activities. TPM will focus on the demand at which the business operates against the maintenance and scheduling needed to drive performance, thus avoiding one of the wastes of downtime that can occur from breakdowns or delays.
Set-Up Reduction
Set-Up time is the time it takes to change equipment from the last good part of the previous production lot to the first good part of the subsequent production lot. If you think in terms of a race car and how the crew acts during a pit stop, the mission is to create shorter setup times, more frequent setups to reduce lead times to improve cost, quality and delivery by reducing inventory, direct labor, and space. The Set-Up Reduction Module (also known as SMED = Single Minute Exchange of Die) will help your team identify and implement Set-up Reductions.
Creating Continuous Flow
Creating Continuous Flow takes you to the next level in work cell design where you’ll achieve even greater cost and lead time savings. You’ll learn:
-Where to focus your continuous flow efforts
-How to create much more efficient work cells and lines
-How to operate a pacemaker process so that a Lean value stream is possible
-How to sustain the gains, and keep improving
Leadership System
The Leadership System integrates the most critical component in driving both Growth and Lean improvements: people. The three main aspects of the Leadership System are: Business, Culture, and Talent.
Business
Business
Establishing operating rhythm processes to deliver improved business performance, leading a mission-driven, Lean culture transformation across the company, and performing critical due diligence and acquisition integration processes.
Mission, Vision, Values Process
Mission, Vision, Values Process
Our MVV Process is designed to deliver an aligned Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Set of Core Values. These are the cornerstones of Transforming Company Culture.
Business Operating Rhythm
Business Operating Rhythm is more than just a monthly meeting. If your current state operations review appears as a “Show and Tell” and less about driving results, let Lean Focus help you identify your critical core value drivers, cadence, action plan design, KPIs (key performance indicators), and review agendas to drive real results.
Breakthrough Kaizen Week
This Kaizen week is identified at the organization’s highest level (i.e. President’s Kaizen, Breakthrough Kaizen) which allows for senior leadership to participate in highest level and critical Value Stream Kaizen events in one week. Multiple Kaizens can be conducted during one week, with the aim to achieve breakthrough results while engaging the participation of Senior Leaders.
Leading the Lean Transformation
Leading the Lean Transformation
As a Leader in an organization, you are the most critical to drive the direction, culture, and performance by your team. Leading a full- or partial-scale Lean Transformation will take understanding, patience, and diligence. Through this 1-day course, you will be exposed to the most critical Leadership elements needed in order to adopt, implement, and sustain a thriving Lean culture.
Due Diligence & Acquisition Integration
Due Diligence & Acquisition Integration
In a merger or acquisition, due diligence and a plan for integration from one organization into another requires a high level of expertise, insights, and planning on the front end. Lean Focus’ team and leadership are highly trained and knowledgeable in the requirements of thorough Due Diligence processes, identifying key focus areas, risk management, and post-acquisition planning.
Culture
Culture
Developing the Icons, Lexicon, and Code that drives your organizational culture by building adoption through every level of the organization, and cultivating internal talent to drive continuous improvement.
Lean Culture Diagnostic
The Lean Culture Diagnostic assesses the Lean maturity of an organization looking at 5 Elements of a High Performing Culture and 14 Guiding Principles (Ways of Working). Most importantly, the assessment uses “gap” analysis to identify high-payoff improvement opportunities that can lead to an action plan.
Engagement Process
This process is designed to define and drive employee engagement in the Transformation. The focus is on involving all levels of organization in the transformation and measuring the impact to core business KPI’s.
CI Leader Bootcamp
Continuous Improvement Leaders need to practice what they preach, meaning continuous improvement and learning is a continuous process! During the CI Leader Boot Camp week, leaders will get hands-on training on how to prepare, execute, and sustain Kaizen events, learn critical skills for driving involvement and engagement of participants to drive results, and ultimately, best practices for building a strong C.I. culture throughout the organization.
Lean Foundation Bootcamp
Overview of the drivers of a successful Lean transformation. Intensive hands-on work with Lean tools in flow, standard work, 6S/VM, pull, daily management, leadership Gemba walks, value stream mapping, A3 problem solving, and strategy deployment. This is an intensive hands-on workshop using the client’s real situations to accelerate learning.
Building a Lean Business System
Building a Lean Business System
What’s the secret behind successful companies like Toyota, Ford, Danaher, and John Deere? They’ve each built a strong performance culture using a successful Operating or Business System rollout. This course teaches you how to build the systems necessary to create a culture that drives performance, sets expectations, reduces waste, and ultimately, delivers results.
Talent
Talent
Addressing strategy behind your recruiting, onboarding of new talent, managing the performance of existing talent, building the right organizational structure, and designing the next bench of players through Talent & Succession Planning.
Talent Management Process
Do you have the right talent to achieve your goals today? Do you have the right “bench” to step up to bat if any of your talent were to leave? These are tough questions that an organization must be prepared to answer in today’s competitive employment marketplace. Our Talent Search team will support your organization in not only identifying a game plan for today’s players but also building the “bench” of future star players.
Organizational Readiness Process
Organizational Readiness Process
At the core of driving an Organization’s Vision, Mission, and Culture, is the talent and infrastructure of resources to support it. Through a rigorous Organization Review and Strategy development process, an organization can construct its resources, people, and reporting layers to drive the results it needs. The deliverable here is to enable competing by design.
Performance Management Process
Performance Management Process
Performance Management and Development is a critical pathway to ensure that your associates’ performance and development is tied to the strategic direction and vision of the company, while also ensuring engagement for retention. Our Talent Search team will guide your organization through the process and installment of a Performance Management program along with the action plan to install and ensure sustainment to drive results.
Leadership Development Process
Leadership Development Process
Developing emerging leadership talent is vital to sustainable growth. Our LDP process delivers a structure to how to bring talent along in their development journey. It also provides for a level setting on how all leaders should lead in an organization
Reward & Recognition Process
What gets measured gets done, what gets rewarded builds a culture. Our R&R process helps the organization align compensation and reward with the results and values of the company in order to further strengthen the culture.
Foundation System
The most critical component to building a Lean Focus Business System™ is to have key foundational tools understood, accepted, and integrated into the business. The foundational tools we use include: 8 Wastes & 3Ms, Value Stream Mapping, Kaizen Event Process, 6S & Visual Management, Problem Solving Process, Standard Work & Leader Standard Work, Transactional Process Improvement, Daily Management, and Visual Project Management.
8 Wastes & 3Ms
This module helps teams identify the difference between what is value added to a product/service/final deliverable and what is not value added. In order to improve the work processes, one must eliminate the 8 wastes and the 3Ms = Muda (waste), Mura (unevenness), Muri (Forcibly).
Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
A Value Stream is a key business process that adds value to a product or service. Value Stream Mapping allows you to identify the Current State of your key value stream, identify wastes in your processes, and use real data to identify measurable targets for improvements. A Value Stream Mapping exercise allows you to visualize the “big picture” of a high level process and identify key “Kaizen” event improvements to target to improve the process towards a measurable Future State.
Kaizen Event Process
Kaizen involves breaking down a process, removing any unnecessary elements, and then putting it back together in a new and improved way. The process should now work more smoothly and fully utilize the skill sets of everyone involved. A Kaizen event is a five-day team workshop with a specific goal or set of goals for an area that needs improvement. This event will be led by a team leader and will include training, data collection, brainstorming, and implementation. At the end of the event, the team leader will create a follow-up plan and a report to be submitted to management. Many people are familiar with the term “Kaizen”, which is Japanese for “change for better”. In business, Kaizen refers to any activities that improve the function of a process.
6S & Visual Management
One of the critical elements towards a Lean working environment is an emphasis on Safety, while creating a Visual Control in order to satisfy other critical requirements of the business, such as Quality, Delivery, Inventory, Productivity, and Engagement. 6S, which stands for “Safety, Sort, Set-in-Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain” is a framework for creating a visual, controlled environment to deliver products/services at an expected output level. This module will review the requirements and installment for a sustainable culture using 6S and Visual Controls.
Problem-Solving System
Often times, teams and companies will find themselves firefighting the same problems over and over again or are stuck as to how to resolve a problem. Most often, a problem is poorly defined or nebulous in nature! Associates will gain experience with our proprietary Problem-Solving System (PS2) using real problems brought in as pre-work and provided case studies. Skill development will be the focus for the 2 days, where you will learn AND apply new and unique approaches to solving problems such as: developing your “burning platform,” clearly and succinctly defining your problem, and breaking down your problem into its largest causal contributors.
Standard Work / Leader Standard Work
Standard Work / Leader Standard Work
This program will train on concepts of Standard Work and apply to a real live problem at the client site. Final deliverables will include SW confirmed and finalized, associates trained on the new SW, and a Leadership report out of impact to gap.
Transactional Process Improvement (TPI)
Transactional Process Improvement (TPI)
Once improvement priorities are identified (typically identified in a Value Stream Map), TPI is one tool Lean Focus uses to help clients build stronger processes and tools. It helps identify the more detailed level process mapping in its current state, identifying process breakdowns, try-storming new improvements, and implementing towards a future state with clear, measurable deliverables and impact to the process.
Daily Management
Daily Management is the most important tool/process in a successful Lean transformation. Daily problem-solving across key performance metrics in the various business functions will enable the business to achieve its strategic objectives over the long term. Real business results will be realized during this event.
Visual Project Management
A Visual Project Management module will help your team with a project that may require cross-functional participants, significant resources, and/or longer term project management with a clear timeline for delivery. An Obeya Room (meaning “big room” in Japanese) is utilized to bring together critical resources that drive the “project” forward, used to house the daily management, reviews, and problem-solving needed to drive a project forward according to expected timelines.
Guiding Principles
The foundation for Growth, Lean, and Leadership relies on the culture of how we work. This is an overview that encapsulates the 14 principles or ways of working for the foundational system to be built upon.
Set High Expectations
To set high expectations, you first need to understand what is and isn’t achievable based historical data, forecasted data, and current resources. Once the bar has been set, align your organization behind those critical KPIs and hold your associates (and yourself) accountable to driving those results & stretching performance. Provide coaching and feedback along the way to ensure those results are realized.
Stop & Fix
Instead of putting out fires when they flare up‚ stop and fix the root cause problem. This will avoid costly workarounds and flawed solutions. But don’t stop there; make it OK to share problems publicly. Dedicate time, resources, and support behind problem-solving. This will enable you to build a problem-solving mindset which will give your teams the tools they need to address issues properly—and prevent them from happening again.
Develop People
High-performing cultures invest in people development, with emphasis on leveraging their strengths. Per studies done by Gallup, work groups that implemented a strengths-based development intervention saw:
>10-19% increase in sales
>14-29% increase in profit
>3-7% increase in engaged customers
>9-15% increase in engaged employees
>6-72-point decrease in turnover
>22-59% decrease in safety incidents
Respect Others
Per Harvard Business Review studies, employees that got respect from their leaders reported better health & well-being, more trust & safety, greater enjoyment & satisfaction with their jobs, greater focus & prioritization, and said they were more likely to stay with their organization than those that didn’t. Which means respect of roles, diversity, and values needs to be more than just lip service, it needs to be demonstrated in action. Only once you build an inclusive team will you be able to tap into your team’s full potential.
Continuous Flow
Processes should be balanced to flow at the rate of demand of the customer (internal or external)—meaning material, information, people, machines, and methods should flow un-interrupted. This extends to all pieces of the value stream, including suppliers and customers in pursuit of perfection and the ideal lot size of 1. If there are obstacles or barriers to this, remove them using waste elimination.
Create Pull
If push means top down forcing or exertion, pull means pulling something at the time it is needed. As a principle, all processes should be connected via pull systems with clear signals. Pull systems improve process and workflow, preventing bottlenecks and inventory logjams. Pull can also create followership, where associates willingly want to participate, support, or own a responsibility.
Level the Work
Leveling the workload so there are no unreasonable burdens placed on any one person, team, or machine can reduce inventory strain, increased discounting, call abandonment, and overtime incurred. This requires smoothing the sales funnel process throughout the quarter to even demand finding. The goal is to strike a balance between flexibility, stability, and predictability, also known as ‘Heijunka’.
Mind vs. Wallet
Take a mind-first approach to budgetary decisions by seeking solutions that are already within your control; identify existing resources to get the job done. Reallocate resources based on prioritization and impact. Spend the company’s money as if it were your own; smarter, not harder. And if a large investment is needed, think hard about it—will it achieve your goal in the time you expect?
Go & See Yourself
Don’t take someone else’s word for it. Going to Gemba (where the work is done) and seeing things for yourself helps to visualize the problem & see if process is followed. Gemba walks should be scheduled, consistent, and built into the culture to reinforce leading by example & continuous improvement values.
Standardize Work
First, clarify the process. Then, standardize and document the best-known way to ensure a consistent outcome. Make sure to oversee critical moments such as onboarding & training to ensure procedures are being taught/adopted correctly. Finally, outline standards for improvement.
Visualize Problems
Make it easy to spot problems by making them visual. That way you can quickly see where you are winning and losing—and if you’re not winning, you can quickly identify why. But this can only happen if you make it safe and acceptable to expose problems in the first place—encourage it.
Kaizen Mindset
Change is a constant force—use it to your advantage. By adopting a mindset of continuous improvement, you and your teams can increase focus and performance. Utilize Kaizen tools and cross-functional consensus-building to align your organization and drive results.
Leaders Teach
The best demonstration of comprehension is when one can teach. That’s why true leaders lead from the frontline as teachers & experts in the culture & tools. That way, employees learn by doing, at Gemba.
Eliminate Waste
Eliminating waste is a never-ending journey to identify and eliminate or greatly reduce “The 8 Wastes.” One way to do this is build poka-yoke (error-proofing) into processes that reduce barriers and improve workflow.
READY TO SEE THE LEAN FOCUS BUSINESS SYSTEM™ IN ACTION?
