Our expertise in lean and management tools will improve your bottom line, to eliminate waste and make your company leaner, better and faster. We provide projects and certification training in each of our tools, to transform your organization from the inside-out.
Visual Management/5S
Visual Management are a set of techniques that help expose the waste so you can eliminate it and prevent from reoccurrence, it also help create standard processes for every employee to follow.
Creating and organize, efficient, cleaner workplace that has clear work processes and standards helps your company lower its costs. Also, 5S will help your employees' job satisfaction improve when their work environment makes it easier for them to get the job done right and to feel their workspace is a result of their own commitment.
Visual Management are a set of techniques that help expose the waste so you can eliminate it and prevent from reoccurrence, it also help create standard processes for every employee to follow.
Creating and organize, efficient, cleaner workplace that has clear work processes and standards helps your company lower its costs. Also, 5S will help your employees' job satisfaction improve when their work environment makes it easier for them to get the job done right and to feel their workspace is a result of their own commitment.
5S Steps
- Sort ( Seiri ): through the items in your work area, your goal is to keep what is needed and remove everything else
- Shine ( Seiso ): and clean your workplace by eliminating, all forms of contamination, including dirt, dust, fluids, and other debris
- Set in Order ( Seiton ): evaluate and improve the efficiency of your current workflow
- Standardize ( Seiketsu ): to find the best practice and work habits to operate and share the information with team members, establish standard procedures for your methods and make sure to educate everyone to detect any out of other situation
- Sustain ( Shitsuke ): constantly re-evaluate your workplace using a strategy that will maintain the order and optimum environment
Value Stream Mapping
The term value stream refers to all the activities your company must do to design, order, produce and deliver its products or services to customers. The value stream map uses simple graphics or icons to visualize the sequence and movement of information, materials, and actions in your company's value stream. The value stream map is probably the first step your company should take in creating an overall lean-initiative plan.
Developing a visual map of the value stream allows everyone to fully understand and agree on how value is produced and where wastes occurs, measure lead times, process times, waiting times and first time quality.
The term value stream refers to all the activities your company must do to design, order, produce and deliver its products or services to customers. The value stream map uses simple graphics or icons to visualize the sequence and movement of information, materials, and actions in your company's value stream. The value stream map is probably the first step your company should take in creating an overall lean-initiative plan.
Developing a visual map of the value stream allows everyone to fully understand and agree on how value is produced and where wastes occurs, measure lead times, process times, waiting times and first time quality.
8 Wastes:
- Correction: Rework, work done because of errors in the previous process
- Motion: Unnecessary people motions, travel, walking, searching
- Material Movement: Unnecessary handoffs, transfers, filing, distances of material & information
- Waiting: People waiting for machines, information or people. Information waiting on people or machines
- Inventory: Information or material waiting in queue
- Process: Redundant or unnecessary mental or physical work; work that is giving the customer more than he/she is willing to pay for
- Human Underproduction: Under utilizing capabilities, delegating tasks with inadequate training
VSM Steps:
- Scope: Determine the value stream to map
- Current Map: Understanding how things currently operate
- Future State: Designing a lean flow through the application lean principles
- Planning and Implementation: The goal of mapping , KPI and Lean Metrics
- Post Implemenation Review: Validate plan, 30, 60, 90 days checkpoints
Lean Metrics
Lean Metrics enable you to measure, evaluate and respond to your organization's current performance in a balanced way, and considering the importance of people factors for your organization's success. Your goal is to select the metrics that accurately portray your company's performance.
Lean Metrics are tailored for each company, however regular lean categories include People, Quality, Cost, Responsiveness and other such specific to the each industry as Safety or Environment.
Lean Metrics can provide Standard KPIs for the company wide and the ability to measure performance between business units and companies.
Lean Metrics enable you to measure, evaluate and respond to your organization's current performance in a balanced way, and considering the importance of people factors for your organization's success. Your goal is to select the metrics that accurately portray your company's performance.
Lean Metrics are tailored for each company, however regular lean categories include People, Quality, Cost, Responsiveness and other such specific to the each industry as Safety or Environment.
Lean Metrics can provide Standard KPIs for the company wide and the ability to measure performance between business units and companies.
Steps for Lean Metrics:
- Review Business Plan and current metrics system
- Prepare and discussed Business Plans and new metrics: Set Objective, Methods, Targets
- Train and review metrics with workforce
- Visually publish Lean Score Cards
- Periodic review of metrics and action plans
Error Proffing
Your organization needs to be competitive and must deliver high-quality products and services, you cannot afford to produce defective products or service. Error proofing is a structured approach to ensuring quality all the way through the work processes.
The approach prevents specific errors and thus defects from occurring, enabling you to improve your production and business processes.
The goal of error proofing is to create an error-free production environment. It prevents defects by eliminating their root cause.
Your organization needs to be competitive and must deliver high-quality products and services, you cannot afford to produce defective products or service. Error proofing is a structured approach to ensuring quality all the way through the work processes.
The approach prevents specific errors and thus defects from occurring, enabling you to improve your production and business processes.
The goal of error proofing is to create an error-free production environment. It prevents defects by eliminating their root cause.
Elements of error proofing:
- General Inspection
- 100 % inspection
- Error-proofing devices
- Immediate feedback
8 D's Step resolution process:
- Establish the Team
- Describe the problem
- Develop an Interim Containment Action
- Define / Verify Root Cause
- Choose / Verify Permanent Corrective Action
- Implement / Validate Permanent Corrective Action
- Prevent Recurrence
- Recognize the Team and build Knowledge base
Standard Operations Procedures
Work combination is a mixture of people, processes, materials, and technology that comes together to enable the completion of a work process. The term standard operations refers to the most efficient work combination that a company can put together.
Putting together standard operations forces you to break down each of your work processes into definable elements. This helps you to readily identify waste, develop solutions to problems, and provide all employees a guidance to the best way to get things done quicker.
SOPs can be created in hard copies and also online. Online format allows staff to find exactly what they want, when they want it.
Work combination is a mixture of people, processes, materials, and technology that comes together to enable the completion of a work process. The term standard operations refers to the most efficient work combination that a company can put together.
Putting together standard operations forces you to break down each of your work processes into definable elements. This helps you to readily identify waste, develop solutions to problems, and provide all employees a guidance to the best way to get things done quicker.
SOPs can be created in hard copies and also online. Online format allows staff to find exactly what they want, when they want it.
Standard Operations Process:
- Establish improvement teams
- Determine your takt time
- Determine your cycle time
- Determine your work sequence
- Determine the standard quantity of your work in progress
- Prepare a standard workflow diagram
- Prepare a standard operations sheet
- Continuously improve your standard operations
Kanban/JIT
Kanban is a method of using cards or recipients as visual signals for triggering or controlling the flow of materials or parts during the production process. It synchronizes the work processes within your organization with those of your outside suppliers.
Organizations must be ready to have enough people, machines, and materials to produce what is needed at peak times, but when smaller amounts of work are required two wates occur: underutilization of resources or overproduction.
Kanban is a method of using cards or recipients as visual signals for triggering or controlling the flow of materials or parts during the production process. It synchronizes the work processes within your organization with those of your outside suppliers.
Organizations must be ready to have enough people, machines, and materials to produce what is needed at peak times, but when smaller amounts of work are required two wates occur: underutilization of resources or overproduction.
Benefits
- Workers are cross-trained to handle various machines and work processes becoming very flexible
- Prevents overproduction because produces only what is needed
- Employees know their production priorities
- Employees are empowered to perform work when and where is needed
- Unnecessary paperwork is eliminated
- Increase employees' skill level
- Reduce Work In Progress (WIP) and inventory costs
- Improve stock control
- Reduce lead time to delivery
- Allow visualization of process demand
- Improve process deviation escalations and root cause rectification
Project Management
A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end, usually constrained by date and resources, but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value.
A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end, usually constrained by date and resources, but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet particular goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value.
Project Management Process
- Define Project Objective
- Divide Project Scope - Work Breakdown Structure
- Define activities and tasks into work packages - Responsibility Matrix
- Define a communication plan
- Calculate time estimates for each activity
- Graphic the activities in a network diagram, Gantt and PERT-CPM
- Calculate cost estimates for each activity
- Calculate project schedule and budget
- Prepare a Risk Assessment Matrix
- Conduct Earned Value Analysis and monitoring
- Evaluate the project and lessons learned
Kaizen/Continous Improvement
Kaizen and Kaizen Blitz, or Fast Track Teams, analyze an organization's business processes to find opportunities that can be quickly improved. This process enables quick reduction in costs, faster quality improvements, and increased customer satisfaction. By streamlining and redesigning business processes, waste, non-value added activities, rework, and redundancies can be eliminated quickly.
Kaizen and Kaizen Blitz, or Fast Track Teams, analyze an organization's business processes to find opportunities that can be quickly improved. This process enables quick reduction in costs, faster quality improvements, and increased customer satisfaction. By streamlining and redesigning business processes, waste, non-value added activities, rework, and redundancies can be eliminated quickly.
Lean Kaizen / DMAIC process
- Define (D) Define the scope and set objectives in project charter
- Measure (M) Measure the current state process map such as process steps, process time, lead time, WIP, etc from the work place or gemba
- Analyze (A) Analyze current state, i.e. value and non-value added processes, bottleneck constraint and process efficiency
- Improve (I) Improve process by designing a future state map
- Control (C) Control and hold the gain with metrics to monitor results over time
