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Lean Strategy and Planning

Lean Strategy and Planning define the overall implementation approach to apply lean thinking to the business to increase throughput while reducing inventory and operating expense.  Specific techniques along with benefits and our capabilities are described below. Lean Thinking Overview

Lean Enterprise Business Planning

The Lean Enterprise continuously strives to perfect material and information flow, pulled by customer demand in a visual, self-explaining workplace - in all factors of the business from customer service to product delivery.  Lean Enterprise Business Planning builds a blueprint for action including vision, mission, objectives, goals, strategies, plans and resource requirements to accomplish the lean implementation within the organization.  Change is facilitated and solutions are improved by involving the workforce through management coaching, teamwork and performance management.  Becoming Lean - Vision of Demand Flow Manufacturing

Managing change effectively helps the organization to transition from current state to future state while taking care of culture by using leadership coaching, sponsorship, stakeholder involvement and continued effective communications throughout the change process.

Key Benefits

• Improvement framework fits with company strategy for integrated approach
• Coordinated approach builds commitment within the organization
• High involvement and empowered cross-functional teams builds organizational transformation
• Measurable results against critical metrics reinforces individual, team and company performance

Activities

• Define needs of the organization based on interviews, observations and analysis
• Build a vision of lean to assist management to rally personnel 
• Fit the implementation approach and goals to the organization and its needs
• Define how to measure and reinforce individual supportive behaviors and team-driven business results
• Develop the organizational approach for cultural change, involvement, capability growth and performance management

Use business planning and lean strategy development to integrate your lean efforts with the  organization and business objectives. Engage the workforce from management to operations level employees. Build consensus on the need to change and implementation strategy before embarking on your lean program. Coordinate resources in a unified manner to accomplish lean goals in support of meaningful business objectives.

Value Stream Mapping - Process Analysis

Value Stream Mapping uncovers opportunities to provide value to customers, simplify information flow, identify and eliminate waste, streamline and connect material flow, and pull production based on the customer demand rate (takt time). Value Stream Mapping is an organized approach, used on selected product families, whereby cross-functional project teams walk and map the current material and information flow. They then apply lean thinking to create a future state map, with lean elements such as kanban systems and cellular flow. Kaizen breakthrough event targets are identified. The team is shown several lean possibilities and facilitated to develop their own creative application. 

Value Stream Maps help executives, managers, and engineers depict and analyze door-to-door (and beyond) flow instead of discrete production processes, and to implement lean systems instead of isolated process improvements. Value Stream Maps combine material and information flow. 

The current state map shows the existing, often convoluted, material and information flows and includes present statistics such as cycle times, distances traveled, yields, resource availability and lead-times measured in days of supply of inventory. The future state map integrates material and information flows in a more seamless fashion using lean tools such as cellular manufacturing, pull systems, and pacemaker scheduling. It further identifies where targeted Kaizen breakthrough events are needed to implement such changes as bottleneck breaking, preventive maintenance and yield improvements. A value stream project plan is required to map out the transition, establish sponsorship, define resources, identify actions, assign responsibilities, and track implementation progress. Value Stream Mapping

Other process flow mapping techniques fit different circumstances.  Flow mapping may be used to pinpoint specific defects and root causes to points in the process to facilitate correction.  Information flows may be shown with relationship maps, sequential flow charts or icon-based flow maps.  Cost-Time profiles can convert the flow charts into graduated cost contribution over time showing visible or invisible inventory.  Extensive experience helps to apply the right tool from a diverse tool kit to the task at hand.  Process Flow Mapping for Improved Flow

Key Benefits

• Teams focus on customers and product families to improve performance where it counts 
• Combined material and information flow visualization supports integrated systems thinking 
• Current state baseline and future state - lean blueprint teams better visualize changes 
• Improvement targets, tied to critical metrics, recognize and reinforce performance gains 
• Value Stream Maps link to organization strategy and value stream transition plan with specific kaizen breakthrough events diagrammed to target implementation of lean practices 
• The right process flow mapping tool selected for the specific application yields business improvements

Activities

• Define customers and their needs within corresponding product families 
• Map internal material flow and information flow from customers to production and suppliers 
• Define current state map with baseline measures of inventory, lead-time, cycle-times, travel distance, yield and process availability
• Present lean transformation concepts and techniques - apply to the situation and map to envision the future state map 
• Target kaizen breakthrough events on future state map and value stream project plan
• Apply various process flow mapping tools and techniques to solve a variety of business and manufacturing problems

If you are unclear on where to start your lean journey, Value Stream Mapping provides a great tool to focus your efforts. It offers a way to visualize the current state of the business in relation to the customer and the product family. Future state map helps to give the team a lean vision to rally around. By tying the transition plan to the organizations strategy, and with consistent review and support from management, cross-functional teams achieve dramatic results.

Project Planning - Leadership

  Project plans guide effective change implementation.  Resources needed and available are identified.  Objectives are converted to specific deliverables.  Activities are identified to fulfill the deliverables.  The timeline for completing activities is defined.  It is critical that plans are resource-driven, or realistically accomplished with resources allotted to the project.  Often it is most effective to layout a high level plan for a sequence of kaizen events.  Then dedicated teams accomplish implementation through intensely focused events with clear deliverables, even if specific project activities are left to the discretion of the team.  Implementation requires planning and disciplined, coordinated follow-through.  

Key Benefits

• Project completion on time and within budget
• Efficient use of company resources - people, materials and money
• Linkage to company strategy and goals supports an integrated approach
• Project team coordination and management reporting keeps projects on track
• Realistic timeline driven by resource availability assures plans convert to implementation
• Coordinated major plant and facility layout transformation 
• Team member motivation through performance management 

Activities

• Define resource capability, quantity and availability
• Clarify company strategy linkage, project goals, deliverables and critical milestones
• Establish a project budget - track and control expenditures
• Map activities to achieve goals and complete project deliverables
• Assign resources in specific quantities to activities and specific tasks
• Build project plan network and details in Microsoft Project software
• Forward or back schedule the project and confirm timeline
• Help project leadership to coordinate resources to complete activities 
• Provide hands-on, workplace direction and guidance to get the job done
• Report progress to management and make necessary course corrections
• Provide measurement, feedback and reinforcement to motivate effective performance

Do you have a large project, outside the scope of normal operational activities? Would a major overhaul of your facility improve output and reducing operating expense? Do you lack sufficient resources or have difficulty coordinating resources to accomplish projects objectives on-time and within budget? If so, you need the help of experienced professionals - industrial engineers with extensive background in facilities and equipment moves and rearrangements.

Kaizen Breakthrough Events

During Kaizen Breakthrough Events, dedicated teams are led to rapidly deliver innovation and continuous improvement. The cross-functional team works together steadily for 3 to 10 days with 30-day follow-up. Actions link to lean objectives such as plant layout changes, cellular flow, setup reduction, quality improvement, pull system implementation, 5S - visual systems, standard work or methods improvements.

Key Benefits

• Significant breakthrough change accomplished with measurable results
• Concentrated efforts by focused resources, during 3 to 10 day event, make it happen 
• Cross-functional teamwork supports change to a culture of increased cooperation 
• Lean capability development through training and practice supports continuous improvement 
• Bottlenecks are relieved to help increase product throughput to increase revenue 
• Improved quality and efficient standard processes yield consistent results 
• Events show the organization that radical change is possible - so they embrace change

Activities

• Propose kaizen targets and sequence to accomplish value stream transformation 
• Select bottleneck targets to increase throughput while reducing inventory and operating expense 
• Prepare for kaizen breakthrough event: materials, videotapes, area, team and objectives 
• Train team in lean and kaizen concepts and specific technologies applicable to the event 
• Facilitate team to analyze process and brainstorm improvements 
• Encourage data-driven approach and aggressive performance targets 
• Direct and reinforce immediate implementation of significant changes in the workplace 
• Define, assign and track activities to accomplish kaizen objectives 
• Guide progress reviews and final report-out to reinforce team and involve organization 
• Follow-up on thirty-day action plan and process standardization

If your improvement project is stalled or limping along, kaizen events may offer a solution. Resources consumed by day-to-day firefighting can focus on specific, tangible objectives in an area with sufficiently narrow scope to achieve breakthrough results in a short period of time. The results will speak for themselves.

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Send mail to GregHart@HartInnovations.com with questions or comments about this web site.