Lean event, Kaizen, or workout

Selecting transcript lines in this section will navigate to timestamp in

the video
- Have you ever wished if you could only gather the right people together, put them all
in a room, and pick their brains to address a problem or to improve on one area or
process. Well now you can. It's called a kaizen. Kaizen comes from a Japanese
term. Loosely translated, it's change for the better or simply put,
improvement. Sometimes it is called a lean event, a rapid improvement event, or a
WorkOut. A few different names all describing the same thing. The term WorkOut was
coined at GE. Essentially if you take unnecessary work out of the process to streamline
and make it more efficient. Kaizen is a well organized, structured, and facilitated event to
improve a work area, a department, a process, or an entire value stream. These rapid
improvement events can vary from one to five days, depending on the objective and
scope of the kaizen, such as to understand how the value stream flows or does not flow
due to mistakes, delays, and bottlenecks in order to improve it, prioritize what's
important to customers of a value stream in order to identify key process
metrics, brainstorm and identify likely causes of a problem, generate ideas and prioritize
solution alternatives, reduce equipment setup and changeover time, develop or
redesign procedures or standard work, or organize a work area to improve
workflow. The tools used do not require any intensive or rigorous data analysis, but they
do capitalize on the collective knowledge and hands on experience of participants at the
event. Examples of tools and techniques used include value stream mapping and
process maps to provide a common understanding of what's currently going on and not
going on, Gemba Walk to observe at locations where work is performed, process and
value add analysis to identify non value add steps, rework delays and
bottlenecks, spaghetti diagrams to map the physical flow of parts or transactions in a
facility, the acronyms DOWNTIME, or TIM WOODS, to identify the different types of
waste. Pareto analysis using available data to focus the analysis, brainstorming, cause-
effect diagrams, and five Whys to quickly identify potential causes, creativity techniques
to develop solution alternatives, and multi voting and prioritization matrices to select
alternatives, set up reduction and workload analysis to enable smaller batches and
reduce cycle times, 5S to sort and organize items so that there's a place for everything
and everything's in its place. So when is a kaizen or WorkOut applicable? When quick
analysis and improvements can be achieved using simple tools that do not require any
rigorous data analysis, but can benefit greatly from the collective firsthand knowledge
and experience of the right people. The right people are usually operators, stakeholders,
and customers of the process or value stream. During a kaizen event, participants
work under the guidance of a facilitator who is trained in operational excellence. More
specifically in lean tools. This is important so that the work is done right. The knowledge
and skillset of the facilitator has a big impact on the success of the kaizen. At the end of
the kaizen or lead event, the resulting output is a list. The deliverables include approved
recommendations and sometimes even implemented solutions. Done. The key to a
successful event is planning. Planning should be more than half of the total effort. It
should start at least three to four weeks before the event. Sufficient time and effort
should be allocated to gather existing data, obtain primary information from process
stakeholders, identify the objective and scope of the event, and develop the
agenda. Then you have to identify and invite the right participants for this event. The
lean tools used capitalize on participants' knowledge and hands on experience, so it is
critical that the right stakeholders are invited. Also, this will improve buy in and
acceptance during implementation. To summarize, if a issue does not require intensive
data analysis and you want rapid improvements, kaizen or WorkOuts are definitely
recommended.