SMOR Summary:
Week 1:
Notes video Introduction to Lean:
- A lean culture empowers our employees and focuses on the customer.
Lean is about creating value and eliminating waste:
- reduce costs
- improve efficiency
- improve productivity
- improve quality.
Lean is a way of looking how we do things and removing as much waste as possible, so the
end customer gets the most value. Lean also makes things better for employees and the
organization.
When applied correctly lean can:
- increase efficiency,
- increase effectiveness
- increase quality of processes.
- Lower operating costs.
- Improve customer satisfaction.
- Improve employee satisfaction and morale.
- Free up employees to work on other opportunities.
This model encourages employees to make their processes better. Lean emphasises the
processes and not the people, it is about respect and teamwork. It is also about incremental
improvement and not a sudden big change.
Lean is about getting rid of wasteful steps in a process, this will result in that people can
focus on other opportunities.
Customer is the person at the very end at the line and gets the service we are providing.
Value is determined of the view of the customer, a step in the process adds value only to
the extent that it adds value to the eyes of the customer.
Waste are the parts of the process that don’t add value for the customer, those are the
steps we try to eliminate through lean.
Therefore, it is important to firstly determine the customer and the value added through
their eyes to the service they get and then look at which part are waste and determine if
they can be eliminated.
3 criteria that need to be met in order to add value to the service:
1. The customer must care about it or be affected by it.
2. It must change the product or service (fit, form or function).
3. It must be done right the first time.
, If 1 criterion is not met it is a waste step and therefore it can be taken out. But, sometimes a
step still needs to be part of the process in order to work.
Three categories after the 3 criteria:
- Step adds value to the process: Keep these and aim to make them better
- Step that doesn’t add value to the process, but is necessary: Try to reduce
- Step that adds no value to the process: Consider for elimination.
Lean also eliminates other waste next to any non-value-added activity, like: Adds problems,
Blocks the flow of value. Four types of Office Waste: The signal inefficiency and an
opportunity to do things better, faster or cheaper.
1. Information: Redundant input and output of data, incompatible information
systems, manual checking of data that been entered electronically, data dead-ends
(data is never used), re-entering data, converting formats, unnecessary data,
unavailable data, missing or unknown data, unclear or incorrect data, data safety
issues (lost data or incorrect data) and data discrepancies.
2. Process: Defects, scrap, rework, workarounds, inspecting, checking and double
checking, approvals, variable flow in a process, too much inventory, incompatible
work, overproduction, waiting and over processing.
3. Physical environment: about inefficient movement of people: Traveling to another
office location for a meeting, organizing a dishevelled conference room before a
meeting, going to your division’s office supply person for a replacement pen.
4. People: wasting important aspects of people: Unclear role (unclear responsibility,
authority and accountability), lack of training, work or task interruptions,
multitasking, underutilization of talent, hierarchy and structure, recruitment errors,
lack of strategic focus and handoffs.
Flow: even if all steps add value and all waste in eliminated, the process needs to a have a
consistent flow through to steps in order to make it to the customer as fast as it could.
Batch flow: waiting for a certain amount of processes to be made before putting them
through.
Single/lean flow: processing things 1 at a time. Product or service moves quickly and
continuously through the system. Use pull vs push. Push is handing out work to the next
person in the process before they are ready for it, pull is about the next person in the
process is ready and pulls the work from the last person.
Lean management Traditional management
Simple and visual Complex
Management by sight Management by status reporting (decisions
remotely made with data)
Pull systems Push systems
Reduce non-value-added work Speed up value added work
Single item flow Batch production
The right process will lead to the right Results at all costs
results
Quality build in Quality inspected in
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