Joel Stanwood: Where to start with Hoshin Kanri in a not-yet-lean company?
A mid-sized manufacturing company is finalizing its strategic plan and believes that it is time to begin Hoshin Kanri. The company is not currently operating as a Lean Enterprise -- functional silos create significant amount of waste which results in poor product/service quality and high cost to serve. Additionally, different departments and regions of the company are "pulling in different directions." What advice, resources, and lessons learned can you provide to the managers of this company to successfully organize and deploy Hoshin?

Posted on April 27, 2013

Archive for May, 2012

Jean Cunningham: Standard work is the best way that is currently know to do the work By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Thursday, May 31, 2012

Standard work is the best way that is currently know to do the work.  As decided by the people who do the work.  To get the best possible standards, the people doing the work might have involved customers and suppliers of their work to better understand what is needed.   The standard will evolve over time as the work content changes, the understanding of waste improves, and the supplier and customer needs change.   The real question I think is "why have a standard?"  And as the question implies, the purpose of the standard is achieve repeatable results irrespective of who does the work which improves downstream quality and results.  Additionally, ...

Continue reading this entry »

Jeff Liker: Standards might stem from an individual’s suggestion or it could be the result of a group discussion By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

In the Toyota Way the purpose of standardized work, or any standards for that matter, is to provide a baseline for kaizen.  If 5 people do the job differently than any individual with an idea will only apply the idea to her own work.  The individual will learn something, but the group will not.  In order for a group to learn they have to agree on a standard and then when a new idea is tried and confirmed it becomes the new standard.  If only one individual was doing the job they might be able to learn in their head ...

Continue reading this entry »

Cécile Roche: Are work standards individual or collective? By Cécile Roche, Thales LEAN Director - Probasis - Last updated: Wednesday, May 30, 2012