The best ideas are still only ideas until someone actually uses that idea for real. I have read many books about Lean, the continual improvement process Toyota have used in their different manufacturing 'value streams' to become the world's biggest car manufacturer. However, all the organisations I have seen that have also read about Lean have not ventured passed the 'that seems like a good idea' point. Instead, they have laboured on all the reasons why they shouldn't or couldn't implement Lean.
Until today. I gatecrashed a presentation by the IT-development department, having heard on the grapevine that actually implementing Lean was being discussed. It was better than that. The IT developers were using 'Kanban'http://www.crisp.se/kanban,one of the central planks of Lean to improve how they managed their work flows. Kanban is a way to signal to the rest of the work flow that work is starting, happening, stopped or complete. This aids work flow planning and can be used to reduce waste.
The team could have spent more time planning, defining the value streams, optimising the work volumes, describing the steps, equalising the work load. The result would have been endless debate. Instead, they have just got on and tried it out based on some rudimentary thinking and planning.
The amazing thing is, after just a few weeks, the whole work atmosphere has changed and the whole team can quickly hear from their colleagues, see or test out where work packages have got to using their back to basics 'Blue Peter' engineered work flow model that is reviewed as a team every morning over a brew.
Well we all know how good Blue Peter is. There are also some really interesting observations around the origin of waste......sometime the customer is not always right.....
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