Lean Government. Even to the seasoned Lean practitioner, this idea sounds far-fetched. Governments are traditionally seen as the epitome of bureaucracy and red tape, incomprehensible forms and endless queues. But there are workable Lean strategies for governments seeking to reduce waste. Eight are outlined here.…
“I did a lot of spaghetti walk this morning”, was uttered by my wife after we left our house. “What did you cover with your spaghettis?” was my question knowing…
MYTH: LEAN SIX SIGMA HAS MANY TOOLS I DO NOT NEED. Certainly, life is much easier without the need to choose between 50 advanced tools for problem solving. However, if the only tool available is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In reality, there is a multitude of process problems that need more than a hammer……
Working capital is influenced by a complex system consisting of external and internal factors as well as strategic decisions. External drivers are composed of economy, cost of capital, regulations and market position. Strategic decisions include geographies of customers and suppliers, customer mix and vertical integration. Tactical factors are policies, processes and metrics, systems and tools and also the degree of execution of the former.
When Uwe asked me whether I would like to go to Gemba in order to help understand the client’s process we have been studying, I looked it up on Google. To my surprise, Gemba is not a secluded, unknown part of Singapore. Gemba (现场) is a Japanese word that means “the real place”. Japanese detectives use Gemba to point to the crime scene.
Lean application outside of the manufacturing sector is frequently met with scepticism. Oft cited reasons are that service providers do not ‘manufacture’ anything and that there is no ‘production line’ to speak of physically. All that is seen are desks, chairs, phones and computers.…
Here are some typical Questions and our Answers regarding the Lean Six Sigma deployment in an organisation. If you have more questions, please feel free to add them as a comment and we will try to answer.…
Everyone, undoubtedly, has had the unenviable honour of experiencing ‘bureaucratic government processes.’ Be it applying for your first ID or passport, to initially obtaining a driving license and the inevitable dealings with the tax man.
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An Australian construction equipment rental & leasing firm had decided to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning system in 12 months. During this 12 month period there was an expectation that all front-end services including Sales, Customer Service, Receivables, Payables, would be re-designed to achieve streamlining and simplification prior to ERP implementation.
Operations spanned 18 cities across Australia with many more small ‘re-sellers’ located in the Australian interior or ‘outback’ as it is locally known. Compounding a normal organisational and operational setup was the fact that this firm grew a substantial portion of its business through the acquisition route thus effectively incorporating myriad systems and practices. There were 5 Receivables systems, 4 Payables systems and a decentralized customer service database (more than 200 input platforms) which needed to be tied together to make the ERP implementation work.
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After a Lean programme for inventory was instituted the production facility struggled with getting a good product mix out to the finished goods inventory due to relatively long change-over times for cutting dies. Steel tool (final product) cutting dies need to be replaced after every 4 Kanban batch runs of 225 pieces each.
This frequent changeover, occurring once every hour of work is necessary to maintain and re-sharpen the cutting die’s cutting edges. Current changeover time for the cutting die was approximately 60 minutes and included the use of a single 10 ton forklift though the die weight was 5 tons. Nearly 50% of a working day was ‘wasted’ on changeovers not including the impact of the ‘inability’ to achieve a high vol-ume of product mix for agility to meet with product demand requirements of a Lean pro-gramme.
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Today, organisations must change their priorities from a traditional focus on planning and control to emphasising speed, innovation, flexibility, quality, service and cost. The HR team has to demonstrate their commitment to meet these key business drivers.
A major problem confronting HR managers today is to increase line management and employee productivity, provide higher more value-adding levels of HR service and internal customer responsiveness and at the same time reduce costs. What is needed is an HR team that is customer-focused and market-driven in its external relations with customer and process-focused and team-oriented in its internal operations.
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