Lesson 2 “How To Improve The Process” 

In this post we are offering a look into summary of what was covered during that lesson.  My hope is that readers may find value in the lessons and use the course to help educate teams and employees about Lean.  Our Online training follows the same plan as though we were teaching Online. We have included a Live Zoom Meeting each week where we do Lean training and help students get their questions answered.

By teaching this course online we hope to save our students money and yet still provide weekly Zoom sessions with Lean coaches, hands-on project guidance and measurable improvement tools.   

To get you up-to-date, we have included the following discussion points from the last lesson, Lesson 1: “Where Do We Begin Lean?”. In this lesson we discussed the first step toward understanding the need for Lean “To Study the Work”

A Better Way to See Lean

At Toyota, we learned a different approach: look closely at the work itself and make small, daily improvements.

On some assembly lines, a job is broken into just 60-second intervals. At first, improving a 60-second job sounds ridiculous—how could saving one second matter?

But here’s the power of Lean: those small changes, multiplied across jobs, teams, and days, create measurable improvements in cost, quality, and time.

The challenge? Employees are often asked to focus on seconds, while managers are pressured to show big, bottom-line gains. That gap is where most Lean efforts stumble.

Lesson 1 Post: https://lnkd.in/ejEcATue

Lesson 2 Improving The Process

Almost all of the work we do is part of a process.

In a large manufacturing facility, the parts needed to make the product are ordered.  The products are received and delivered to the area where the product is being produced. And then there might be steps 3,4,5 etc. until the product is completed, inspected, packed and shipped.  

When each of the steps are studied in detail we begin to see the process clearly.  

If you work in Human Resources, you might look at the process of interviewing, selecting, hiring and training a new employee.

In a restaurant, you might look at the process of serving a guest.

In the example from lesson 1, we discussed a 60 second job on an assembly line. . 

When we say Lean is about improving the process, employees in a Lean company are taught to study this 60 second job and see if they might reduce one or two seconds.

That may not sound like much of a savings, but one or two seconds saved times hundreds of jobs can be huge.

It is important to point out that it would be impossible for the leader or manager to make all the improvements.  That is why lean breaks the jobs into small, incremental steps that an employee can learn to improve.  

Another Lean lesson is this:  The steps are to be followed in a specific sequence. 

 If the steps are followed in the exact same order, a quality product will be made.  If a step is skipped, a defect or quality problem may be created.

Following the steps allows employees to be rotated from one job to another. As the rotated employee takes over and follows the exact same steps, a quality product will be made.