Lean continuous improvement solutions

The Rapid Improvement Event - Using the Kaizen approach

Our Rapid Improvement Event facilitation support follows the "Kaizen" improvement methodology where an intense improvement activity occurs over a very short period of time, typically 3-5 days, this is when the team go to the actual workplace, to understand and uncover the problems, come up with solutions and actually implement them.  

What is Kaizen?

• Kaizen is the focused application of lean tools to rapidly reduce waste in a process to improve cost, quality, delivery, speed, flexibility and responsiveness to internal and external customer needs
• Kaizen focuses on incremental change and is the continuous improvement vehicle utilized by the Toyota Production System
• Kaizen is a vehicle for driving quick-hit value by implementing “do-now” solutions through employee involvement, relying on the fact that the participants, who do the job every day, are the people best placed to identify process improvements
• A Kaizen Event assembles cross-functional teams in a focused 3-5 day dedicated event to reduce waste and attain sustainable results
• It is a facilitated workshop that protects and empowers the team to execute a complete end to end improvement project in just 3 to 5 days

Project Structure & Timeline

The overall project duration from initial scope out to close out is typically 6-8 weeks depending on the complexity of the problem.

Project Scoping

We would work with you to scope out the opportunity, crucial in planning for the event;

• Identify the business case - capture current performance, the challenges and the pain experienced
• Outline the scope of the project - whats in, whats not
• Identify future state targets and goals 
• Identify key stakeholders, and who will sponsor the project
• Agree the team members required and the timing 
• Agree sponsor agreement - to ensure sponsor is 100% aligned with responsibilities of this crucial role, and equally what they can expect from us
• Draft Project Charter

Team Training 

Engagement with the selected team members to ensure;

• Basic awareness and understanding of Lean and an Introduction to tools and concepts that will be used during the event 
• Achieve a common understanding of the event goals and target
• Chance for the team to challenge the detail on the draft charter
• Agree and sign up to the project charter
• Identify any data requirements, that will be needed for the pre-event

Pre-event

We would advise on the need for the pre-event based on the initial scoping and percieved complexity of the problem to be addressed.  If the pre-event takes place it will be used to;

• Allow the sponsor to kick off the event and empower the team to deliver on the charter
• Develop a detailed Value Stream Map (VSM) of the current state condition - if possible this would be conducted at the actual place of work through observation and engagement with those involved in the process
• Identify and add all relevant data and information to the VSM
• Agree actions for team members to gather additional data required to fully populate the VSM and be available to bring to the Kaizen event  

Data Gathering

Typically we would plan a gap of 1-2 weeks between the pre-event and the kaizen event, this is to allow for any missing information or clarifications to be made, on information/facts/measures/data that was not available during the pre-event. 

Kaizen Event

The team convene full time and follow the structured Kaizen process to deliver on the agreed charter, the following key activities would be completed during event;

• Identify issues and non-value adding activities from the VSM
• Identify all constraints, including the bottleneck
• Use Root Cause Analysis to help remove and/or mitigate the constraints
• Implement and test the agreed solutions
• Develop & document the future state VSM
• Document any new procedures, processes, templates, roles and responsibilities
• Prepare communications and implementation plan for the roll out using the 8 Step Change Process 
• Conduct a report out to management on the output from the event

Event Follow up

Typically a 3 week period where the team would be expected to regularly report back on progress on any actions taken from the event and also monitor the process to ensure benefits are being realised.  Outstanding actions should be minimal as it should be expected most would have been executed during the actual event.  

We will however have change management related actions, there would be an expectation that all kaizen team members now take the role as change agents and actively support the roll out of the new ways of working in line with the communications and implementation plan. 

What is A3 Problem Solving?

It is a structured problem solving and continuous improvement approach, originally developed by Toyota intended to foster learning, collaboration, and personal growth in employees.  It is now widely used within many organisations to provide the structure and support for executing continuous improvement initiatives.  It provides a simple, structured process that guides and enables employees to problem solve in their work place. The process is drafted, documented and managed on a single sheet of ISO-A3 size paper, which is the source of its name.

Why use an A3 Process? 

In most organisations, in most teams, we aren’t collaborating as best as we could be.  We often reactively begin working on implementing a solution, without fully understanding the problem, and all too often we find we are duplicating effort due to a lack of awareness and alignment.

The A3 process allows groups of people to actively collaborate on the purpose, goals, and strategy of an improvement project.  It encourages and ensures in-depth problem solving throughout the process, able to be updated and adjusted as required always ensuring the project meets its intended goals.

Collaboration between talented people is critical for innovation and speed, using the A3 process to foster collaboration can help organisations and teams invest their time, money, and momentum effectively.

Advantages of using A3 problem solving;

• Provides a consistent and common approach to solving a problem in an organisation
• Summarizes the entire project on a single sheet of paper - simple visual management
• Allows everyone impacted by the problem to see it in the same light
• Provides a visual depiction of data and information that allows for easy communication amongst all concerned
• Enables teams to solve problems more effectively in the workplace
• Ensures that no short-cuts are taken whilst solving the problem — mitigates against jumping straight to solution mode
• Promotes a systems thinking approach, which considers how the actions taken during the problem solving process impact the other parts of the company

Steps of the A3 process;  

• Establish and state the problem or issue
• Describe the background and ythe current situation 
• Define the problem statement
• Conduct Root Cause Analysis - analyze root causes 
• Define target state 
• Create an action plan for getting it done 
• Check that you've achieved the results - standardise, measure & sustain 

Using A3 for Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is easy to say, but much more difficult to implement and hard to practice because we don’t know where to fit it in between project driven work.  We discuss continuous improvement ideas in  meetings all the time but it’s hard to make the time to sit down and work on improving our processes and practices.

The A3 process can provide the structure for and the documentation for your continuous improvement efforts, making it more aligned to your everyday project focused work and the organisations vision and strategies.  

Many organisations effectively use the structured A3 Process as part of their lean approach to help align and manage all continuous improvement efforts.