Joe Dager (@business901) has posted a video interview with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute about Kaizen Teams without Kaizen Events, or Can Kaizen be part of Standard Work?
[slideshare id=8394746&doc=kaizenpartofstdwork-110623020735-phpapp01-video]
Summary
Balle makes some key points:
Standard work is about routine v non-routine, prescribed v non-prescribed
Standards are not the same as saying everything the same for everyone everywhere
Standards = a scientific process
- the few things we know “mountains of certainty” – standards are very useful here
- “the islands of we believe so” – standards are looser and we need to understand if the standard applies – need to do kaizen to understand why situation is different
- “the oceans” of “we just don’t know” – need to do kaizen to see if we can find a starting standard
Dager makes the point – how do we make this real for the busy middle-manager?
Balle’s view is that it is about a change of mindset, from “too many fires for Kaizen” to “the fires are in a state where I can live with them, I have to do the Kaizen first to reduce the number of fires”.
What is the first step of the 100 steps? What can you do in 1 minute every day?
Aligning the steps with the strategy, but break it down into small steps.
Typically takes five or ten Kaizen to understand a topic.
Thoughts
For me this was a very timely post – in my last post on making a Kanban Review and Retrospective part of Standard Work with the team I am coaching I describe our first steps to standardise the process of reflection – which should enable a bootstrapping to a more effective process.
It always helps to have a conceptual framework for what you do, and I sense the differentiation between “mountains of certainty”, “islands of we believe so” and “oceans of we just don’t know” will be most useful.
