Kaizen culture in organizations

19th July 2019

How to drive Kaizen Culture in organisations
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  • The requirement of world is changing at a faster pace than what we can imagine. Competition is so fierce in every field. Life cycle of products is reducing at rapid rate.  Car models are constantly being upgraded with new features and new technologies. New variants gets added every other day. Laptops, mobiles … name everything. It is changing for better every day.
  • Survival of fittest who adapt to changes and who create change.  Change for better. In Japanese, Kaizen is the name for continuous improvements. (Kaizen is trade mark of Kaizen institute).  We need to constantly shift our paradigms on how to do things. How to manufacture things better, how to deliver better with minimal waste and high value.

Related Article– Total Employee involvement through Quality circles and Kaizen Circles can take organization to World Class levels

  • Some of the businesses who did not anticipate the changing needs were left behind or become obsolete.
  • If continuous improvements are needed, it has to be done on regular basis. It could be every hour or every day or every week as the case may be.  Change can be done by those who are close to Gemba (work place) or those who have access to the real thing or real situation.
  • Doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results can lead to insanity.
  • Kaizen is of two types.  Small, incremental improvements done regularly.  Kaizen events which are big improvements with structured planning and done with involvement of all key stakeholders of the area which needs improvement.
  • One of the best practice to evaluate employee involvement is based on the measure of how much extent they are contributing to continuous improvement  in the workplace.

To make continuous improvement culture effective in organisation, it is necessary for the organisation to train the employees towards right culture by providing necessary support and trainings.

  • Prerequisite for improving some thing is to have a standard defined which can also be referred as Standard Work. Standardized Work is tool which captures the current best practices for a process.  Kaizen is when improving that standard work by finding a better method or process or tool.
  • Create a training module –General on Kaizen.
  • Create internal examples of how kaizen is applied – with photos and videos
  • Conduct Kaizen training to all operators and supervisors – 1 hour module
  • Ask everyone to list out what can be improved in their respective areas
  • Get the list of all the kaizens recommended by operators and supervisors
  • During Gemba Walk, if someone has an idea, they can use a display board to grab attention.
  • Use Idea tag system.
  • Have kaizen traceability with numbering done at the point of use. 

Organisations need to keep a very close monitoring on what is happening not only in their specific industry but also beyond their industry segment.

  • Individuals need to have exposure in best practices in similar industry as well as other industry. can be measured on the number of improvements implemented by an employee in a given period.  Industry benchmark is to get atleast one improvement per person per week.

  • Have weekly kaizen drive
  • Create recognition  method
  • Recognize people every month based on criteria
  • Gemba Walks
  • Plan Vs actual – Production
  • Defects –in house
  • External factory benchmark visits (E.g. TVS, Honda, Bosch etc.,)
  • 7 Wastes – Focussed workshop
  • Inter factory visit for kaizens

Continuous improvement  is one of the element of Lean manufacturing, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Seven Steps Business transformation helps in deployment of continuous improvement culture in organisations through their flagship training programmes conducted through Seven Steps Academy of Excellence.

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bulletproof-your-career-with-lean-manufacturing-sixsigma-methodologies

12th July 2019

Bulletproof your career with Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma methodologies
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There used to be a time when certain jobs are considered as dream jobs and highly respected such as Telecom new connections and ticketing clerk in a reservation counter, teller in banks. These were all niche jobs and posts. What happened to those jobs?  Are they still in demand or the demand has reduced?  Many of those who did not want further learning or skill enhancement were left behind as clerks with same pay or lost their jobs.

Similar things happen in many industries where the job role becomes obsolete.  Many people declare their experience in their resume.  If some has learned a job in one year and got mastery over it and continued in the same job for 25 years, it does not mean that he has 25 years experience.  It is equivalent of one-year experience only. This implies that if within two years, if they do not eliminate their job and move on with a new job profile or new field, the person is bound to be outdated.   There is a wide difference between “being efficient” and “being effective”. As the old thought says, efficiency is climbing the wall faster. Effectiveness means, finding the right wall and climbing fast.  As per Toyota production system or Lean Manufacturing methods, a tortoise can be more effective than a rabbit in covering distance faster.

Contrary to the old way of thinking of highly skilled in one job and zero skill in other job, Toyota way of thinking calls for multiskilling and inherent abilities.  Higher job roles also needs knowledge in multiple domains and functions.  For example if some one joins Quality department in early career, they are expected to learn Lean manufacturing methodologies also which support Quality. They cannot say that my job is in Quality department and why should I handle production related problems. In the same way, if some one in production department should also know problem solving skills, 7 QC tools, process capability, Six Sigma methodologies.

In automotive sector, a traditional welder is replaced by a high performance Robot which also means de-skilling the job elements. If the welder feels that he wants only welding job and does not learn any further or jumps to another job where welding is manual operation, he is struck as welder in his full lifetime.  Welder should upgrade his skill further to next higher level of ability to programme the robot or becoming a Lean planner who can improve material flow through Value Stream improvements. That way, he can be upgraded to a better job profile. It is high time people understand the need for their skills relevant in constantly changing market requirements.

There is a recent threat in Automotive industry for converting petrol, diesel vehicles to electric or hybrid vehicles.  This again calls for adapting and reskilling of people across the functions to be ready to embrace drastic change in their product portfolio. Everyone should be in a position to leave the old technologies and adapt newer technologies.  Continuous learning culture will enable every one to learn every day.

Those organizations who embraced and consistently implemented concepts such as 5S, Lean manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance and Total Quality Management and Six Sigma in their current working culture have demonstrated the ability to learn any thing new and move on.  This also helps in improving attitude, respect for people which also helps in adapting their jobs in any new upcoming industries and sectors.  If one is specialized in automotive in the past, they can easily move to Aerospace industry or food industry.  If some one is experience in the past with mass production or high volume production, they will know how to adapt themselves with high mix and low volume production.  They will be more adaptable to change due to their confidence in handling any situation and due to having knowledge of key principles of Lean manufacturing.

Seven Steps Academy of Excellence is helping individuals and organisations in skill development through various training modules and courses such as Applied 5S training, Six Sigma Green Belt Training, Six Sigma Black Belt Training, Problem Solving Tools and Techniques, Policy Deployment , Daily Work Management Systems, Kanban supermarkets.

We can support organisations in skill development of their employees through inhouse training programmes and customizing to the needs of the specific industry.

As part of college to corporate initiative, Seven Steps Academy of Excellence also offers specialized skill development programmes to Students to improve their employability through finishing school.

Seven Steps Academy is one of the best training centers to get trained in Lean and Six Sigma. The faculties are really knowledgeable, and they make you learn with their
experiences. Myself after completing the training decided to work in this domain in future. They also give tips on how to pass the exam from ASQ. if you want to become a complete Lean Six Sigma professional, do the course from ASQ and Seven Steps Academy and pass the exam and get certified.

- Deepak K S

Seven Steps Academy in association with Karnataka German Technical Training Institute Bangalore (KGTTI- A Govt. of Karnataka initiative) offering this unique program and all the practical sessions of the same will be conducted at the state of the art facility of KGTTI Bangalore campus.

After successful completion of the program deserving candidates will get immediate placement as Trainee Engineer in a precision manufacturing industry.

Automobile Engineering

Course Duration : 8 Weeks (320 Hrs)

Eligibility: 

  • Career Opportunity in Fresh B.E / B Tech in Mechanical / Production
  • Design, Planning, Sourcing, Production,Quality, Maintenance, Sales & Service etc.
  • Industry Segments
  • Automotive, Aerospace, General Engineering,
  • Energy, Defence, Electronics, Machine &Cutting Tools, Mining & Construction
  • Equipment and Tooling Industry etc.

College to Corporate

  • Increased rate of corporate placements.
  • Satisfied students and parents.
  • Cut above the rest and create a benchmark above other colleges.
  • Contribution to society by producing high performing human resources.
  • Benefits to the Academic Institution

Course Curriculum in Brief

  • Precision Manufacturing Industry-an overview
  • Corporate culture- basic etiquettes and expectations
  • Behavioural and Leadership Skills
  • Introduction to Engineering Drawing
  • Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing
  • Various Manufacturing Process
  • Basics of Metal Cutting
  • Machine Tools- Cutting Tools- Fluids
  • Introduction to CNC machines
  • CNC Operation & Programming
  • Process Planning & Control
  • Cost Estimation, Time Calculation
  • Metrology and Measurements
  • Heat treatment & Surface Treatment
  • QA & QC and Quality Practices
  • Introduction to 5S, KAIZEN, Lean, Six Sigma methodologies

For your requirements of skill development and inhouse training programmes, please get in touch with us.

Seven Steps  Academy of Excellence is Learning and Development arm of Seven Steps Group ( A business excellence focussed organization) dedicated to Research, Training and Development in the area of Leadership, Quality and Business Excellence. Academy offers around 15certification programs and more than 100 experiential learning modules in the areas of Lean, TPM,TOC, TQM , Quality Management Systems and Six Sigma. It also provides Industry specific and approved  training programmes for Engineering, Automotive, Retail, Aerospace, Healthcare, Hospitality, IT and Process Industries.

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