Wednesday's Words of Quality, Lesson #10: PDCA Problem Solving

 Wednesday's Words of Quality, 

Lesson #10: PDCA Problem Solving 

Richard Zarbo, MD  © 2022 Wednesday’s Words of Quality

Lesson #10 of 13

"Your success will be affected by the quality and quantity of new ideas you suggest."

                                                                            -Brian Tracy 

 

PDCA

 

In our continuous improvement culture, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is a core process for problem resolution of individual work defects and systematic deficiencies. You will recall that our continuous process improvement adheres to specific work rules as defined by Steven Spear in "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System."

 

Making improvements relies upon subjecting proposed changes to the discipline of measurement, data collection, analysis and then reassessment for effectiveness via data collection again. From using deviation management and daily management we can get a sense of the ‘pulse of the machine’ in near real-time, from the employees who are closer to the point of receiving or producing work defects. In our system, everyone is empowered through a defined process improvement routine to work toward effective resolutions in concert with their team leader or ‘teacher’.  This team based, worker-empowered approach to continuous problem resolution has been described as the 4th "Rule in Use" of the Toyota Production System by Steven Spear and clarified as the ‘Improvement Kata’ by Mike Rother. 

 

The Improvement Kata, founded in Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), deals with scientific experimentation, discovery and learning in the workplace. At its core, this approach to problem solving relies on the development of people so that insight into root causes and proposed interventions and process repair arises closest to the level of the actual work and those who do it. With employees engaged and accountable for solving their own work problems, this is how the culture changes for the workforce from one of hiding and blaming to one of openness and learning.

This reliance on measurement and data is at the heart of the PDCA or Deming cycle and has been referred to as the scientific approach to quality improvement. We approach this as a culture of aligned and self-directed work teams and leaders in the Henry Ford Production System resulting in thousands of documented improvements over the years.

 

The Hypothesis

 

Scientific advances require the generation of a hypothesis about what could be and an experiment to potentially disprove that hypothesis based on experimental data. This is not unlike suggestions generated to make changes that are hypothesized to improve processes.  We test them for positive effect and then agree to adopt the change or not. The more numerous and more frequently we can turn around these tests of proposed changes, the more rapidly we can improve current conditions.

 

To base changes, especially thousands of them, on fiat or the voice of the loudest, the first or the oldest amongst us would be folly. The scientific basis of change requires us to propose a hypothesis statement or best guess that may or may not be true. "If we change this, then this will happen." This statement of proposed change is then to be tested. Therefore the test plan requires a mini-experiment and requires us to take the time to propose and agree on measures and data collection that would properly assess the change reflected in the hypothesis statement.

 

For instance, our hypothesis statement might be as simple as- if we move and store the routine supplies for our job closer to the place where we conduct the work, we will shave off the time of wasted human motion by 20% over one shift. Ergo, we will open capacity for increased productivity and throughput. Now we must sit down as a team and devise how to measure our wasted human motion on that task and the other variable parameters so that we can compare the precondition baseline of motion associated with getting supplies and the post-change condition of motion in that same job.

 

Science is an open-ended system in that each hypothesis answered generates more questions that require an explanation. Thus, there is a cycle of questions, answers, and more questions advancing knowledge.  This mirrors the PDCA cycle.

 

To translate to our world of work, in our endeavor of striving for more efficient work processes, we continually ask what else can be done and tested to push us toward a target goal or a more perfect way of doing things. 

 

The Ideal Condition

 

Often, that more perfect way of working is characterized by handling work such that it can be completed 'on demand', defect-free, one piece at a time (with minimal if any batching), with no waste (remember there are 7 forms of waste), immediately (timely for your customer/patient), and safely with respect for people (emotionally, physically, professionally). These attributes describe a so-called ideal condition in a lean production system espoused by Toyota.

 

 

The Process of Process Improvement 

The simplified process that we follow in the Henry Ford Production System to effect continuous improvement looks like this:

The process of fixing the identified defect may take the form of:

 

1. A rapid, often daily resolution (just fix it in place when found)

 

This may be elevated to a more involved process with-

 

2. A PDCA based data-driven (A3) resolution with root cause analysis that requires further study about the nature of the defect (e.g., frequency, type, associations, root cause, etc) 

 

This may require team members to represent their team in Customer-Supplier meeting between work stations to better define work requirements and understand root causes and how work can be redesigned for a better outcome

 

In our Henry Ford Production System Lean culture the second more involved resolution process calls for creating a PDCA storyboard of the defect and the proposed countermeasures on a large A3 size piece of paper. This is known from Toyota as an A3 resolution and requires teams to think through the problem more slowly, to go and see, to analyze for root cause in order to understand the problem better. Only then can proposed interventions or changes be entertained and tested as pilots and the effect measured against a baseline. This type of change requires data, before and after, that define aspects of the condition that need improvement.  

 

The defined aspects of an A3 that we have adapted in the Henry Ford Production System are shown below. The left side describes the PLAN aspects of the current state problem, analysis with data, the target condition and the proposed solution while the right side defines actions of the proposed solution and the measured outcome (DO- CHECK and ACT). Our understanding of the ACT aspect of PDCA emphasizes standardization of the new work activities to sustain the improvement. 

This approach above leverages PDCA thinking repeatedly by incrementally moving toward successive targets of improvement through a process of testing many proposed interventions at the level of the work. This now is the basis or routine of problem solving in a continuous improvement culture as proposed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in the 1950s who in turn borrowed the PDCA concept from Dr. Walter Shewhart, who originated it in the 1930s. As you can see, there is "nothing new under the sun." Just better approaches to execution as described in the many academic texts elaborating on Toyota's production system.

 

The typical questions you would ask yourself and share as a team to derive a plan in PDCA based change are described below.

Now, I’m asking you to borrow all of these concepts and truly integrate them into your own process of problem solving with your teams. Here, practice makes perfect, as this is not a natural means of problem solving and not rapid initially by any stretch when leveraging a team and root cause analyses. But you will get faster with time.

 

Just some thoughts as we tackle the challenges of 2022 together, one piece at a time.

 

So, blind us with science this year!

 

 

References:

1. Liker J. The Toyota Way. 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

2. Ohno T. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Portland, OR: Productivity Press; 1988 

3. Rother M. Toyota Kata. Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

4. Spear SJ, Bowen HK. Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System. Harvard Bus Rev. September 1, 1999:96-106

Next WWQ: Lesson #11 – Deviation Management

Wednesday's Words of Quality, Lesson #9: Go and See for PDCA Problem Solving

 Wednesday's Words of Quality, 

Lesson #9: Go and See for PDCA Problem Solving 

 Richard Zarbo, MD  © 2022 Wednesday’s Words of Quality

 Lesson #9 of 13

Teamwork is the Cure

 

Teamwork is the foundation of Lean process improvement, and it has been proven that individuals will extend themselves to make the company successful if they are engaged early on in the decision-making process. In Toyota’s culture, learning is often by experience in which an early ongoing effort is demonstrated to teach teams how to work together to reach common goals.

 

The problem-solving approach is “Go and See” in which subject matter experts observe the problem to deeply understand the current condition before suggesting process improvements.

 

This includes analysis of workflow, standardized work procedures, and further evaluation to analyze and detect the root cause of defects. In comparison, other quality improvement methods often are limited

 

 

Go and See

 

The Deming approach to quality and the PDCA cycle attributed to him were appreciated by the Japanese in the early 1950s as a "way of thinking and managing rather than simply as techniques."

 

In this strategic basis for improvement (the Improvement Kata described by Rother), "Toyota later added the words "Go and See" to the middle of the PDCA wheel."

This act of 'going and seeing' is critical to observe actual conditions for yourself and to

not fall into the manager’s trap of jumping to conclusions.

 

This must be the beginning of understanding a situation before suggestions for change can be made effectively.

 

 

Improvement Kata

 

Professor Mike Rother employs the word “Kata” to indicate when a method of human behavior becomes a routine, an unthinking way of doing things. Making improvements using the data driven PDCA approach is a learned behavior that takes practice as it is a thoughtful, deliberate, planned approach to solving a problem based on deep knowledge of the problem through observation, root cause and data. This is not natural.

 

This PDCA Improvement Kata is learned and perfected through practice (and failure).

 

Dr. Rother describes 4 key points of the Improvement Kata that are founded in PDCA and deal with scientific experimentation, discovery and learning.

 

This is how the culture changes for people from one of hiding and blame to one of openness and learning. At its core, this approach to problem solving relies on development of people with insight and process repair closest to the level of the actual work.

 

The 4 points of this problem-solving routine defined by Rother with my explanations for our own approach to work improvement follow:

 

1. "Adaptive and evolutionary systems by their very nature involve experimentation."

 

This means that there is no one right answer, no one fix to a problem. Just many tweaks on the way to a target condition whose path is largely unknown. Just try something. Let the data tell you if it is worth accepting as a change in process. Given the right leadership and organizational structure, the workplace is your experimental playground to figure out how to do the work better. In the Henry Ford Production System, this is the basis of your empowerment.

 

2. Hypotheses can only be tested by experiment, not by intellectual discussion, opinion, or human judgment."

 

Don't talk, test! What you believe or think is less important than what you try, usually on a small scale. Try many things, rapidly, this is an iterative process until the goal is achieved.

 

3. "In order for an experiment to be scientific it must be possible that the hypothesis will be refuted."

 

Never assume that the change implemented will work as intended and should be accepted as originally designed. That assumption will stop improvement and adaptation in its tracks. The fluid nature of continuous improvement is an adjustment for most who adopt this approach to work and problem solving.

 

4. "When a hypothesis is refuted this is in particular when we can gain new insight and further develop our capability."

 

Dr. Rother elaborates on these concepts when he explains - "We learn from failures because they reveal boundaries in our current capability and horizons in our minds. This is why Toyota states that 'problems are jewels.' They show us the way forward to a target condition. You need to miss the target periodically (again, preferably on a small scale that does not affect the customer) in order to see the appropriate next step."

 

And he continues, "This is a fascinating point when you consider how much we as leaders, managers, and executives try to make it look like everything is going right as planned. The main reason for conducting an experiment is not to test if something will work, but to learn what will not work as expected, and thus what we need to do to keep moving forward."

 

 

"No Problem" = A Problem

 

Rother also observes that "If there is no problem, or it is made to seem that way, then our company would, in a sense, be standing still... The idea is to not stigmatize failures, but to learn from them.

 

We hear about Toyota's success, but not about its thousands of small failures that occur daily, which provide a basis for that success. Toyota makes hay of problems every day, where we tend to hide little problems until they grow into big and complex problems that are then difficult to dissect.

 

Toyota has mastered the art of recognizing problems as they occur, analyzing their nature, and using what it learns to adapt and keep moving toward its target condition."

 

To some, the writings above may be just an academic construct that cannot be realized. However, the philosophy and reality of this manner of working is supported by what we have accomplished in the laboratories of the Henry Ford Health System through the management structures and culture of an empowered workforce that we have created and the principles, rules and tools that we have adapted from manufacturing to our own healthcare environment.

 

Our own Henry Ford said it better yet-

“There are no big problems, just a lot of little ones.”  

 

This is a different way of thinking. Find the little problems proactively at the level of the work and empower the workforce with quality management structure and education to resolve them continually.

 

But do encourage those you have empowered to "Go and See". This is an important early step of problem solving in order to move from assumption or accusation to an understanding of root cause.

 

References

Rother M. Toyota Kata. Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

 

 

 

Next WWQ: Lesson #10 – PDCA Problem Solving

 

Wednesday's Words of Quality, Lesson #8: Role of the Team Member in Quality

 Wednesday's Words of Quality, 

Lesson #8: Role of the Team Member in Quality 

 Richard Zarbo, MD  © 2022 Wednesday’s Words of Quality

Lesson #8 of 13

It is safe to conclude that anyone who attempts to adopt Lean management is not satisfied with the status quo and desires to change work outcomes. Lean success is highly dependent on management’s understanding as Steven Spear put it, that “The real challenge is to expand beyond understanding Lean as a set of tools, and more aggressively pursuing an understanding of the comprehensive approach to managing organizations so they are capable of self-diagnosis, learning, and relentless internally generated improvement and innovation.” But how is this done?

 

To cut to the chase, Toyota’s success 

is the result of leadership and employee involvement.

 

 

Worker Empowerment and Engagement

 

Probably the most significant attribute of the Toyota approach is the establishment of a system culture composed of an empowered and engaged workforce that is expected to drive continuous improvements.

 

This requires consistently held weekly team meetings (brief) devoted to quality improvement of processes. The approaches are based on Lean principles of deeper

process knowledge of failures and proposed interventions for improvement (changes)

based on metrics, until targets of success are met.

 

This results in a basic expectation of continuous attention to opportunities for improvement by all staff. This also defines the foundation of work. The need to continually improve is woven into the fabric of the people and not viewed as a time consuming inconvenience, option, potential reward, or incentive, as often is the perception in the usual American workforce.

 

Your success in adapting Lean to your own work environment can be judged when you can walk away and the employee culture can sustain itself in the implementation of continual process improvements.

 

This requires a critical philosophical difference in the expected roles of your employees.

If you have organized them into teams, we can now refer to them as team members.

 

 

Management Failures

Worker Empowerment

Every worker is a potential team member. If they don't understand that they are part of a team and who their team leader is, then that is a management failure.

 

If they haven't been instructed in the expectation of zero-defect work, the structure for contributing to change, the opportunity to communicate in effective customer-supplier relationships to solve their own problems, and the principles of waste-free, efficient work, then that is a management failure.

 

 

Learning by Doing

 

Unlike many businesses, in the Toyota culture on-the-job employee training in quality

improvement is built into the system such that the expectation embraced by all is that

of “learning by doing” first, with more formal training second. In this approach, staff are

placed in an everyday difficult circumstance and then allowed to problem solve by

doing.

 

Lean processes are designed to highlight problems in real time where the work is

performed by getting to the root cause and by the person doing the job at the time the

problem occurs. In short, feedback loops making use of indicators and metrics are

designed into the process to allow working staff to identify defects in real-time.

 

By comparison, the usual American manufacturing approach to training is that of an

undertaking that must be scheduled, presented by formal instruction, with a minimum

of hands-on instruction. In this latter view, training time is viewed as a detractor of

valuable production time.

 

The Toyota approach to work has been described by Mike Rother as the 'improvement

kata' (a method or routine of human behavior). Can we replicate it? We can certainly

try. It is a fact (proven in industry) that proper training reduces the time associated with

the learning curve and improves quality.

 

 

Applying Work Rule #4, Basis of the Improvement Kata

 

One of the opportunities that most impressed us as a means of moving toward the ideal

condition is Toyota’s Work Rule #4 as defined by Steven Spear, which states that any

improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

 

That is to say that changes or pilot “experiments” are suggested and carried out by those actually doing the work. This approach also facilitates employee buy-in (empowerment) to change and increases compliance with the new work standard.

 

From our own experiences in the Henry Ford Production System, we know that when a

employee contributes to the change, they are more likely to experience ownership.

 

Change then, is not made by, but facilitated by the teacher who is defined as an internal

expert, knowledgeable and experienced in the area taught. This also promotes employee accountability.

 

By comparison, the American business culture often employs external consultants to analyze and suggest change. Yet many times these ‘experts’ have only minimal knowledge of actual work processes and outputs and must be informed and taught of details by the employees themselves.

 

Conversely, in the Toyota approach, empowered workers see their daily work in the context of continually making effective process improvement changes that are designed and tested by the scientific method.

 

To convert to and foster this latter culture, it is important to acknowledge that your employees are the ‘experts’ and hold the knowledge that can result in continually improving the work toward whatever goals are desired by themselves and defined by their leaders/managers.

 

 

Problem Resolution by Team Members

 

In a Lean management system, continuous problem resolution is dependent on a

worker-driven 'bottom up' approach rather than the conventional management driven

'top down' approach to problem solving. By leveraging the quality improvement

organizational structure defined previously that aligns team members with their team

leader and work stations into small teams, we can foster employee identification of the

nature and scope of defects, and stimulate and guide the discussion of possible

solutions that can be tested. This cooperative approach is predicated on a 'no blame but

all accountable' sense of process ownership.

 

Through an empowering structure that continually informs the workforce about the

quality of their work product and charges them with improving it, employees more

readily assimilate the mantra- "never pass a defect".

 

Transforming the culture of work, or more correctly the employees’ incentive to relate

to each other and work differently, must occur to obtain success in a Lean enterprise.

 

The role of leadership is to establish the shift in work expectations, structures and

realignment of incentives so that employees can relate to and interact with each other

horizontally across the path of workflow and contribute collaboratively toward work

process redesign across historical work silos. This takes collaboration of

supervisors/managers who control adjacent, dependent or connected work silos in

customer-supplier relationships.

 

To be effective in fostering change from the bottom-up, so to speak, the people-focused

strengths of Toyota's culture must be reproduced- namely:

 

• Employees in charge of their own jobs

• Employees designing standardized work

• Employees working to continually improve the work, with changes made by teams and effectiveness assessed by the customer focused PDCA cycle

 

 

Roles of Team Members

 

In this new Lean culture of work, the consistently engaged, learning, communicating and

contributing team member is expected to fulfill the following empowered roles so that

effective process improvements can be continually designed and tested by scientific

method (PDCA) in the workplace:

 

• Understand the work rules, principles and tools of process improvement

• Identify defects, daily, on whiteboards or deviation management forms

• Meet in team quality improvement huddles to regularly to share and brainstorm problems in the workplace

• Join teams charged with addressing interventions

• Assist in design of measurement tools and metrics

• Collect the data

• Assist in root cause analysis

• Communicate to other teams, customers-suppliers

• Communicate to managers/leaders

• Keep track of process improvements

• Continually seek better ways of performing the work

• Present results of successes

• Learn from previously proposed interventions that did not work (the failures)

 

As you can see from these activities described above, all focused on improving the work,

such that teamwork and participation in the process forms the foundation of Lean process improvement.

Required Core Lean Activities

 

But there is more. There are 4 core activities required of your employees to engage in teams so that continuous improvement occurs.

We commonly entertain the following questions from managers and employees in Lean training that get to the heart of Dr. Deming’s caution that-

 

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best."

 

Question from manager: How do I get Lean to be more than a sporadic crisis-driven project but rather a continuous improvement initiative owned by all employees?

 

Question from employee: What’s my role in Lean and what do you want me to do?

 

Answer: From our 15 years of Lean experience, we have been able to distill our basic employee training in Lean to address 4 new and expected Lean behaviors. These are core educational modules in Lean Bronze Certification Training that define required employee knowledge and engagement in the Lean continuous improvement process.

 

The 4 activities are:

 

5S (Sort-Set in order-Shine-Standardize-Sustain)ustain)

 

Lean culture requires creating a visual, organized, standardized workplace (workcell) that is organized by employees who do the actual work. 5S is a structured approach to workplace organization that begins the process of standardization and creation of the visual work. 

Ironically, we here at Henry Ford Health are the rightful heirs of 5S which originated with the 5C workplace organization of Ford Motor Company - Clear-Configure-Clean-Conform-Custom.

 

PDCA Problem Solving (Plan-Do-Check-Act)

 

This is a structured approach to problem solving that requires data to define the current condition, understanding the problem more deeply at the level of root cause by involving the customer or supplier, a best guess as to the process change that would improve toward the target condition, an action plan to test the proposed intervention, and data collection to re-evaluate the condition for improvement. Repeated PDCA cycles of process change improvements are implemented until the target condition is achieved consistently.

 

The desired output of problem solving is Standard Work is created by consensus of those who actually do the work. This is the basis of standardization. Written and practiced standard work is continually improved based on knowledge of defective work yet received or produced in order to reduce variability and waste to achieve higher levels of quality, consistency, throughput, productivity and cost.

 

Deviation Management

 

All employees identify and document all defective work encountered to understand what to improve, document corrective actions taken, and contribute to planned process changes to eliminate the most common or severe deviations from expected work outcomes.

 

Daily Management

 

All employees attend Daily Management board huddles to identify, track and resolve the most critical defective work processes by contributing to root cause analysis and proposing interventions within 24 hours of occurrence.

 

The knowledge and skill sets described above define the basic Lean Bronze Certification for beginners in the Henry Ford Production System. Self-directed learning of these basic Lean competencies is available for Henry Ford Health employees and as modules that managers and supervisors may review with their team members.

 

 

 

References:

1. Spear S and Bowen KH: Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System. Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct, 97-106, 1999

2. Zarbo RJ, Copeland JR, Varney RC: Deviation Management: Key Management Subsystem Driver of Knowledge-Based Continuous Improvement in the Henry Ford Production System. AJCP 148:354-367, 2017

3. Zarbo RJ, Varney RC, Copeland JR, et al: Daily Management System of The Henry Ford Production System: QTIPS to Focus Continuous Improvements at the Level of the Work. AJCP 144:1-15, 2015

 

 

Wednesday's Words of Quality, Lesson #7: Role of the Team Leader for Quality

 Wednesday's Words of Quality, 

Lesson #7: Role of the Team Leader for Quality 

 Richard Zarbo, MD  © 2022 Wednesday’s Words of Quality

Lesson #7 of 13

As in biologic systems, structure (organizational) begets function. If the desired outcome is individuals charged with accountability for the quality of their own work, then this requires us as leaders to redefine that expectation of workers themselves.

 

"It’s the work, not the man that manages." -Henry Ford

 

Just saying that work is to be delivered in continuous flow, according to next customer

specification, without defects, in a timely, accurate, cost-effectively and safe manner, won’t make it so. This Lean expectation must be structured to occur consistently. Here we discuss the all-important role of the team leader for quality in work areas or workstations.

 

It is extremely important when training in Lean tools and principles of work improvement to train teams and their leaders along the path of workflow not just individuals to work effectively together.

 

 

Team Leader for Process Improvement

 

The concept of the workstation team leader for process improvement is a novel adaption to the work of healthcare that we borrowed from the Toyota Production System in creating the sustaining work structure of the Henry Ford Production System. This team leader for process improvement is the equivalent of the quarterback in football and is responsible for the functional health of the team toward continuous improvement. This individual is responsible for encouraging team members to identify workplace non-value added work or waste, for instance

using whiteboards, to mine the type and nature of in-process defects that plague us every day, so that teams can generate and test solutions leading to new work design.

 

 

Worker Empowerment & Structure

 

This structure of teams with their designated team leaders for process improvement requires identification of workstations along the path of workflow in order to foster individual worker and team empowerment and accountability for continuous improvement.

 

Juran's definition of empowerment is pertinent here as one who “has knowledge, skills, authority & desire to decide and act within prescribed limits and takes responsibility for the consequences of their actions and for contribution to the success of the enterprise.”

 

To obtain the consistently engaged worker requires us to transform our approach to work from just showing up for work on time and doing as directed, to workers invited to think about and learn from doing their work and to contribute thoughtfully and creatively to doing the work better. In this manner we cultivate empowered workers who now see their daily work in the context of continually learning, constantly communicating with their team members and team leaders in a structured approach to making effective process improvements that are designed and tested by scientific method (PDCA).

 

We should think of work as something that is supplied to or done or created for someone else's use (the customer). To ensure that the work of the workstation is defect free, continually improving for its customer and aligned with the work received from the supplier, requires designation of workstation team leaders to assist the team members with their newly expected focus on continual improvement.

 

This is the effective structure that allows teams to consistently understand improvement opportunities presented by the work itself, for instance from white boards or deviation management, and to employ the tools of improvement in a sustained fashion. If you have multiple shifts, consider appointing a team leader for process improvement on the workstation of each shift so that they can coordinate quality initiatives from workers on all shifts as the in-process defects are encountered. This structures communication between shifts and with the next level leader, the supervisor or manager.

 

 

The Workstations

 

Our definition of workstations are semi-autonomous and multi-skilled work teams along the path of workflow that contribute to a task, service or product that is used by or serves another group in the workplace. You may ask yourself several questions to identify what constitutes a workstation:

 

Who does what for whom? (Customer-Supplier) 

Who passes you your work? (Supplier) 

Who requests work from you? (Customer) 

Are they inside or outside your department? (Internal or External Suppliers and Customers)

 

Work may be seen as accomplished in stages.

-----> Stage 1 -----> Stage 2 -----> Stage 3 ----->

According to Deming- " Work comes into any stage, changes state, and moves on into the next stage. Any stage has a customer, the next stage. The final stage will send product or service to the ultimate customer, he that buys the product or the service."

 

What are the stages of your work?

 

Do you have someone who is specifically designated as a team leader for process improvement in that stage? How have you structured oversight for quality in that stage so that we can achieve Deming's vision that-

 

"Each stage works with the next stage and with the preceding stage toward

optimum accommodation, all stages working together toward quality that the

ultimate customer will boast about."

 

 

Role of the Team Leader for Process Improvement

 

We all have job descriptions sanctioned by leaders, managers and job descriptions. But in a Lean culture where we continually seek work improvements, the most important job expectation of the often ill-defined "OTHER duties as defined" option. 

In a Lean managed culture this "OTHER duties" option becomes larger as we ask employees to act creatively within the prescribed limits of the Lean culture and structure to contribute to continual work improvement.

 

Recognition of team leaders for process improvement along interconnected workstations in the path of workflow to foster this transformed approach to work is an opportunity gifted to leaders and managers that should not be squandered.

 

But how do we identify one of the team to serve in the important role of team

leader?

 

We have numerous options and we should chose very well as this individual's passion and commitment to continual improvement and change are key to success of the Lean culture. Typically, this individual is already defined by an existing leadership or workstation role. If no workstation leader exists then you can appoint by ability, by passion or by vote of the workstation members. Of course, as leaders we may occasionally need to side-step an existing but dysfunctional leader by appointing a co-leader to ensure success. This has many advantages over removing a leader who, despite coaching, for some reason is not capable of leading in this fashion or is not supportive of the changed manner of working with empowered, communicating workers.

 

The team leader choice is critical as this individual must never be complacent with the status quo but rather must continually and proactively push for continual improvement. The advantage of these workstation leaders is that they are located closest to the level of the work where the defects are apparent often only to the workers who do the actual work.

 

 

Quality Related Expectations of the Team Leader for Process Improvement

 

The work-related expectations of the team leader for quality include the following:

 

• Project identification, selection, and prioritization

• Focus on problems and process, not personalities (neutralize the personality blame game)

• Knowledge of and adherence to the Lean work rules and principles, and use of appropriate          tools

• Team member selection

• Project definition, study, and identification of sound measures for PDCA based improvements

• Customer-supplier connections

• Reality test proposed interventions

• Project tracking

• Assure effective Daily Management Board of metrics and interventions

• Push for continual problem identification through Deviation Management

• Seek ideas for change from the team members

• Communication and recognition

• Coach, develop and encourage team members

• Deal with failures

• Celebrate the team’s success

 

This team leader role is a growth and development opportunity that leverages workplace learnings to continually develop people to solve problems in a defined manner. This will come to define your new work culture. You will find soon enough after months of team successes that the Lean culture provides fertile ground for self-growth and breeds our next generation of leaders.

 

Did someone just say Employee Engagement scores?

 

 

Next WWQ: Lesson #8 – Role of the Team Member