Why Your Company Should Do a Gemba Walk

Albert Einstein once said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes”. A manager at an organization doesn’t have to sit down doing the same things and expecting different results. They need to be out there and witness their employees working, see what they are doing; they need to do what is known as Gemba Walk.

This wonderful philosophy is a very important element of lean management and it allows leaders and manager to be in the thick of the action. They observe their employees while they work, obtain knowledge about work operations and look for ways to continuously improve.

The word “Gemba” is actually a Japanese word which when translated to English means “the real place”. When it comes to lean management, Gemba is very important for everyone working in an organization because it is where operations happen. For organizations that manufacture products which are sold on the market, the factory floor is their Gemba. Once again, it is where the work happens and where managers can analyze and observe things.

Here are some reasons for performing a Gemba Walk.

1. Improvement opportunities are easily spotted by an organization

Since managers are on the floors analyzing and observing what the workforce is doing, it is so much easier for them to highlight areas that need improvement. This is because they are not spending their time in the boardroom. They are with their employees on the work floor and get firsthand experience and information which is better than it coming from a second party.

2. Helps an organization stay committed to their quest for improvement

No organization out there wants to remain stagnant and not show any signs of progression as the years go on. Gemba walks helps an organization stay committed to always being innovative and looking for ways to better themselves to be competitive. An organization that does not show growth or progression can lose their customers or stuck using methods that clearly outdated. Gemba walks help present others and keep the improvement wheels in motion all the time as managers are more hands-on than staying still dealing with paperwork in their offices.

3. Increases the bond between management and their employees

As pointed out, since managers are constantly in the presence of their employees, it creates a level of transparency as far as communication is concerned. Employees can open up more and express their suggestions as well as concerned directly to their managers which increases their bond.

When the bond is increased, the workplace becomes a much happier place where employees will do everything they can to make sure the organization succeeds. This is because they see firsthand that the managers care about them and are listening to them.

4. Employees in the frontline can raise concerns quickly

This point goes hand in hand with the point mentioned above. The employees in the frontline are able to effectively participate in improvement and give their two cents on proposed changes for example.

5. Allows managers to spot top performers and employee engagement

Being on the floor allows managers to see which employees are good at their job and reward them accordingly. It also allows managers to see how employees work with each other and see if they have a happy camp or one that is full of conflict.

6. Allows managers to compare old results of past improvement methods with new ones

Managers are able to witness with their own eyes if new improvement efforts made are working better than old ones. By having a front row seat as operations are taking place, they are able to get an accurate representation of events. They can see what is working and what isn’t and possibly draft new plans if needed or improve on existing ones.

Overall when an organization performs Gemba Walks on a regular basis, they are able to build a stable relationship with their employees who will work hard to see the business do well. Problems are spotted quicker and continuous improvement is achieved faster thanks to clear communication of objectives and goals.

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6 Principles of Continuous Improvement

So you have implemented a process improvement methodology, like Six Sigma, and it was successful. While this is a reason to celebrate on its own, there’s still more work to be done. One question that pops into mind is: how do we make sure the positive results of the process improvement stick? As an organization, you don’t want to go through a Six Sigma event only to have the promising results gradually revert over time.

With that in mind, one thing that becomes clear is that there’s a need for continuous improvement, or as the Japanese call it: “Kaizen.” This means improving anything, whether it is a process or product, on an ongoing basis. When your organization adopts a culture of continuous improvement, all improvements made will become cemented, meaning the organization will be optimized and primed to smoothly deliver value to customers uninterrupted.

So how does an organization ensure they build a culture of continuous improvement? Here are six principles to follow.

1. Focus on making small changes

Many organizations think continuous improvement is only about implementing big changes only. But large changes are disruptive and can often face resistance from employees. On the other hand, small improvements, when done incrementally, are less disruptive and more manageable. This means the whole organization doesn’t need to grind to a halt whenever improvements need to be made.

2. Look in the 6Ms

Six Sigma has the concept of 6Ms, which are believed to be behind process variation. In every process, there’s an expected amount of variation in output that is considered natural to it. However, there is some variation that is unnatural to the process known as special cause variation. This causes the variation in output to differ greatly to the point of producing non-conforming products.

By focusing on eliminating the 6Ms, which are man, machine, materials, mother nature, measurement and method, processes can be improved on an ongoing basis.

3. Mistakes teach lessons

Nobody likes to make mistakes, especially if they are costly. However, mistakes can also serve as a valuable lesson on what works and what doesn’t. Employees carrying out the continuous improvement effort need to feel that mistakes are part of the process. They must be given enough room to experiment without being reckless and fearing blame. That way, they will feel comfortable in revealing what they did wrong in order to produce the undesirable results.

4. Ideas from employees have value

Management should take a top-down approach to continuous improvement. Feedback from employees from the lowest levels should be treated like gold since the further down the chain we go, the more that person is in direct contact with the process being improved. And the more direct their knowledge of the process is, the more they are likely to know how to make effective improvements. It is up to management to listen to what their employees are saying in order to make informed decisions.

5. Continuous Improvement is everyone’s job

When the question about who is responsible for continuous improvement is asked, the answer should be that everyone is involved. It doesn’t matter if that person is a janitor, operator, leader or manager. It must be clearly communicated that every employee on every level should take ownership and be involved in all ongoing improvement efforts.

6. Measure effectiveness constantly

Without coming up with a yardstick for measuring success, it would be hard to know if the improvement efforts are working. Process improvement efforts always have an end goal in mind, and results must constantly be measured to ensure the organization is moving towards that goal. Also, by coming up with a way to measure the success, what works can be made apparent for repeatability and what doesn’t work can be eliminated.

Making improvements is not an event that you do once and forget about it. It is an ongoing process, leading to the concept of continuous improvement, which the Japanese have dubbed “Kaizen.” While it might seem like too much work from the offset, the benefits of continuous movement greatly outweigh the number of resources you use to instill this culture in your organization. Hopefully, the above-mentioned principles can help.

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8 Wastes of Lean – TIMWOODS

To create a seamless flow of value that goes all the way to the customer without interruption, waste needs to be reduced. This brings as to an enemy that causes waste in organizational processes, and it goes by the acronym TIMWOODS. Each letter in TIMWOODS represents a type of waste (they are also known as the eight wastes of Lean Six Sigma).

Keep on reading to find out what each of those letters means.

1. Transportation

When products, equipment, inventory, tools and people move further than they need to, you have Transportation waste. Defects and damage to products can happen when materials travel unnecessary distances. Furthermore, exhaustion, accelerated wear and tear and needless work can happen when equipment and people are moved unnecessarily. Transportation also requires packaging to protect items, and can require fuel to transport the items. The transportation time is not improving the value of the item, so it takes time which is a delay for the customer.

2. Inventory

Since value is being stored for a fee (probably in a warehouse), Inventory waste is common in manufacturing. Inventory is any value, whether materials or finished products, that either needs to be turned into something more valuable or sold to customers. And since overhead is being paid to store the products or materials, their value is reduced the longer they remain in there since their profit margin declines with each passing day. For office processes, inventory is a list of action items, your email inbox, and any work you have started but have not fully completed. In your personal life, it is the food in your refrigerator, clothes in your closet, and that book you started writing that you haven’t finished yet!

3. Motion

When machinery, equipment and people move unnecessarily, it leads to Motion waste. The movement can be anything, such as moving, stretching, bending, reaching, lifting and walking, that doesn’t bring any value. There is a need to redesign all work that leads to Motion waste while ensuring productivity and safety is maximized.

4. Waiting

When producing a product for consumers, any inaction that increases costs is known as Waiting. This is waste because while the product awaits its transformation, the organization is incurring overhead. Essentially, any potential profit the product would have made from being sold is continuously stripped as the organization continues to incur overhead from Waiting. Eventually, this contributes to Inventory waste as well, on top of destroying the flow of information and production materials. Waiting occurs in service processes as well, such as waiting for approvals, waiting for someone to return from vacation, and waiting due to confusion or indecision about what to do next in a process that is not well-defined.

5. Overprocessing

When there are more steps, components or there’s work being put into the production of a product that the customer doesn’t require, Overprocessing occurs. In the case of manufacturing, this includes adding in more functionality into the product than needed, making adjustments to already installed components, taking a solution and overengineering it, performing unnecessary analyses, pushing components beyond their limits and unnecessarily using high precision equipment. When packaging a product, can it be taped with one strip of tape or does it actually need 3 strips? In the office, does your manager want a 3-page project update or just one paragraph? Do your customers actually look at all the charts you create, or just one key chart, and ignore the rest?

6. Overproduction

If there’s one waste that can negatively impact the success of an organization as a whole, it is Overproduction. When more products or materials have been produced than customers are willing to buy, that is when overproduction happens. When your organization overproduces what it is offering, other wastes can occur as well. These include Motion, Waiting and Inventory. In the office, if you start working on a presentation for a meeting too early, there is a chance that the meeting gets delayed or cancelled, and you will have wasted that time, or have to go back and update your slides with the latest information. The goal is to do work “just in time” not too far in advance when things can change or get rescheduled.

7. Defects

Defects are the most recognizable forms of waste when it comes to Lean Six Sigma, especially when it comes to manufacturing. In manufacturing, instances of Defects include details missing in assemblies, end products that are in need of reworking and scrapped components and products. This waste is one of the biggest when it comes to manufacturing since it also leads to Overprocessing, Transportation and Overproduction waste. Defects also occur in the office and service processes, with incorrect invoice amounts, wrong customer ID numbers, emails sent to the wrong person, and spelling errors.

8. Skills

This waste has another name: Non-Utilized Talent. This particular waste can affect different types of organizations in various industries (so far, all the examples we have seen have to do with the manufacturing industry). This waste happens when management doesn’t use all of its workers to their fullest ability.

This type of waste also occurs when management decides to improve their processes while ignoring feedback from their employees, even when it comes to continuous improvement. If employees who directly deal with the processes are not allowed to voice their input when it comes to improving them, especially on an ongoing basis, this is considered non-utilized talent – a waste.

Knowing these wastes is a step in the right direction towards eliminating them. You can’t even begin to improve a process unless you know what is causing a drop in performance in the first place. To that end, TIMWOODS is an important acronym to know.

Download a free TIM WOODS (8 wastes) Powerpoint slides >>>

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How a Leader Can Address Employee Concerns on an Individual Level

No matter how well an organization is run, there will always be problems along the way on all levels. Being a good leader is not so much about preventing these problems from happening at all – although it’s good if you can achieve that.

Your main goal should rather be to ensure that whenever something is wrong, these concerns can be addressed on a close, personal level and that employees feel that they have the safety to express their thoughts. They should also know that their concerns will actually get addressed, which is a part of the equation that we often see missing in some larger organizations.

Why It’s Necessary in the First Place

If you don’t develop systems that can address concerns on a level as low as possible, you’re going to run into significant problems with your company in the long run. It might take a while for those issues to present themselves, but make no mistake – they will sooner or later. The most obvious implication is that this will prevent you from knowing when something is wrong so that you can take corrective actions against the problem.

But it goes deeper than that. Ongoing issues with employees’ ability to voice their concerns can lead to growing resentment and decreased productivity. And when dealing with issues of this type, by the time you realize something is wrong, it’s often too late.

Providing Good Input Points

The most obvious thing you could do to make things better for your employees in this regard is to ensure that they have viable points to voice their concerns through. This will vary from one company to another, but the general idea is to have an integrated system that allows people to express what concerns they might currently have and to track their eventual resolution.

Modern technology can make it very easy to set something like this up, so take advantage of that. But make sure that the system is not too complicated to use, and does not exclude anyone for any reason. This will only lead to even more problems of the kind that you’re trying to address in the first place.

Filtering the Input

Not all input is equally good. In fact, as a leader of a company, you’ll have to deal with the problem of filtering out the good input from the bad. And this will sometimes be hard, especially when it comes to people’s concerns. Whenever someone has a problem that interferes with their work, their perception of its importance can get skewed. Some people see their issues as much more critical than they actually are.

And in some cases, someone might not even realize that the things they’re complaining about exist for a reason. The point is, you need an efficient way to filter those opinions out from each other, and this must be deeply rooted within your system itself.

Feedback

Once you’ve implemented something like this, your employees are going to start providing you with feedback on it sooner or later. And it’s a good idea to pay attention to what they have to say, as this will allow you to improve that system in the long run. Ideally, you should have that feedback system integrated into the main tool that you’re using to collect information about the state of your organization in the first place.

But since that’s not always possible, just prioritize setting things up in a way that allows employees to share their current concerns with minimal possible impact to their work. Sometimes, people might be worried that raising their voice on some issues might have negative repercussions for them. You have to make it known that this is not the case in your company.

With enough effort, this kind of system can provide your organization with incredible benefits in the long run, the kind that you simply can’t get from anything else. It’s important to have a proper feedback system integrated tightly into your company and its workflow. And the more your organization continues to grow, the more important this is going to become in the long run. Sooner or later, you’ll be glad that you’ve taken the time to set this up and perfect it to its current state.

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Encouraging Personal Growth in Your Organization

How much incentive do your employees have to develop themselves in terms of skills and knowledge? It’s easy to think that you’re doing well in this category, when in fact you might have some significant problems to deal with. Personal growth is very important in any kind of organization, and it’s the duty of the company’s leaders to promote it in healthy ways that drive cooperation and progress.

However, as you’re probably guessing, this is not as straightforward as it looks. It takes a dedicated approach, and you have to be able to identify the unique individual needs of each person in the company. And that, in turn, is something that can only come with significant long-term experience running that organization. Needless to say, this is not something you can substitute on short notice.

Personal Growth Is Tied to Organizational Growth

You have to realize that personal growth is important, above all because it promotes the growth of the organization as a whole. Many leaders falsely believe that they are the only ones responsible for expanding the company and pushing it to its limits. But in reality, this falls on the shoulders of each and every employee.

And if the leadership is not promoting this kind of mentality enough, the company will stagnate sooner or later. It might not be obvious that you have a problem at first, but it will manifest itself sooner or later.

How to Encourage the Right Behavior

You generally have two approaches available when you want to encourage personal growth. You can either incentivize people with small rewards

or penalize those who aren’t putting in enough effort. Needless to say, the latter option has some negative implications which can’t be ignored, and it’s only suitable in an extremely limited set of conditions.

Ideally, you’ll want to make everyone feel that their effort is appreciated, and make it clear to your employees that they’re doing the right thing by working on themselves. This can be done in various ways, depending on the scale and type of your organization, and it’s a good idea to look into the options early on.

Tracking Results

To make sure that all of this progress does not go unnoticed, you should put in some system that tracks the progress of your employees and records it in a way that’s easy to analyze. Sometimes, it can make sense to make this data available to everyone, as this can provide a further incentive for standing out and doing one’s best. But you don’t always have to go that far.

The point of gathering this data in the first place is to get a better overview of the current situation in the company. By knowing who’s moving forward the fastest, you’ll be able to keep your eye on those who’re showing the best results. At the same time, you can offer a helping hand to those who look like they need it, but might be too afraid to ask.

Integrating Feedback

You’ll often have feedback about the way your employees have been handling this aspect of their jobs, and it’s important that you don’t hold it in for yourself. People will have no way of knowing if they’re doing well or not unless you provide some sort of system for providing them with feedback on that front.

However, you have to also make sure that everyone is actually doing something with the feedback they receive, instead of simply letting it go past their ears. This is another common mistake all too often observed in managers who are too detached from their employees and have no real control over their duties.

It Applies to You, Too

Last but definitely not least, remember that this all applies to you just as well. You can’t allow to let your own skills stagnate over time, and you have to always be on the lookout for opportunities to improve. In fact, it will be even more challenging for you, as you’ll have less feedback from higher levels to work with. On the other hand, you should have no shortage of feedback from your own employees, so make sure to pay attention to it.

If you do this right, you should be able to see real, measurable progress in your organization relatively fast. Don’t underestimate the importance of encouraging growth across all levels, because this is one of the best investments you can make in the long run.

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Why Leading and Being a Boss Are Not the Same Thing

You can tell a lot about someone’s character by the way they respond to the idea of being put in a position of leadership. Many people unfortunately immediately turn their attention to the material side of things, focusing on how prestigious the position would be, and how much more they would be able to earn in it. And of course, the prospect of ruling over others is quite attractive in itself.

But these are the wrong people for the job of a leader. A true leader must be effective at pulling the company forward, rather than idly giving orders from the back and blaming others when things start falling apart. There’s a reason it takes so much effort to climb up to that position in the first place – it comes with some serious responsibilities attached.

The Behavior of a True Leader

There are many aspects of leadership that are important to focus on if you want to make a good impression. Taking responsibility for mistakes is a big one. A red flag to be on the lookout for are bosses who’re constantly looking for an opportunity to blame someone else for their mistakes, and can never take any blame themselves. There are lots of those around, and you might have had to deal with someone like that in the past too.

A leader must also be able to pull their own weight. Leading a company is not just about pointing your finger at people and telling them what to do. You have to put in as much work as everyone else, sometimes even much more. And at the end of the day, be prepared to not get any recognition for that. If things are going well, it often looks like you’re not doing much.

Taking Concerns into Consideration

Another big point is how well you’re able to consider other people’s concerns. This includes both your employees as well as those on your own level. Different people have different ways of expressing their issues with any given situation, and you’re going to have to learn their habits. There’s no way around that if you want to be able to resolve conflicts efficiently in the future.

You must also ensure that there’s a solid system in place for providing feedback, and evaluating it on your end. Many people will want to express what’s on their minds once you open the floodgates, and you’ll need a good way of ensuring that you don’t miss any important details in all the noise.

Expanding the Company in the Right Direction

Growing a company isn’t as simple as just producing more, selling more, hiring more, and so on. You need to have a directed, focused approach if you want things to run smoothly. There is no room for compromise when it comes to choosing an appropriate business development direction. Sadly, it’s not rare that we see business owners going about this pretty much randomly, not paying any attention to where their company is going.

And before you know it, you’re expanding into markets that you have no clue about, dealing with issues that you’re not equipped to solve at all, and generally having a hard time managing your company. And this happens to many people, mostly because they fail to make a good initial plan.

Knowing When to Step Down

A good leader must also know when it’s time to quit. That time will come sooner or later, and leaving your position doesn’t have to be a negative event. It can come with a promotion to a much more responsible role or even retirement. But the point is, you have to know when the situation calls for a change in leadership. If you get to that point, you should exit gracefully and without burning any bridges with the new administration.

If you’ve played your cards right though, your contribution to the company will be remembered. People tend to look back fondly on people they’ve worked with well, and they tend to pay special attention to superiors that have shown to be better than the average boss on the market. Make it a point to make this kind of good impression, and it will benefit you a lot in the future.

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Developing the Right Skills as a Leader

Leading a company is about more than just pointing it in the right direction and ensuring that the organization’s needs are met across all levels. It also involves developing yourself as a person and as a leader of that organization, one who’s capable of providing it with the long-running support that it needs to grow properly.

Figuring out the right skills to work on as a leader, and actually putting the effort to grow them, is not easy. But once you get the ball rolling, you’ll find yourself always craving more. Not only that, but you’ll discover new opportunities. After all, some skills require you to build up certain others first.

General Leadership Skills

The first thing you should focus on is your actual ability to lead the organization. This can be approached from multiple angles. The most obvious one is to take seminars and classes, but you should always remember that you have the internet at your disposal as well. It can be a powerful tool in seeking out the right kind of information and organizing it in an easily accessible manner, and it also offers many free resources aimed at people looking to become better leaders.

Needless to say, if you’re not a very organized person yourself, you can’t expect to be very efficient when put in charge of a large company with multiple departments. If you have personal issues that could impact your performance, you must improve your skills in those areas before proceeding to the more specific points.

Industry-Specific Knowledge

No matter how good you are at leading in general though, you can’t go far without some specific knowledge about your own industry. This will be very individual for each person, and it will require frequent consultations with other people in your industry. Developing the right contacts is crucial for this, as it will help ensure that you can see each problem from multiple perspectives.

You might sometimes miss some of those angles when analyzing an issue yourself, and it’s good to have that kind of external support. Sure, you can’t count on that assistance for every single issue that you’ll deal with, but you should still be able to get plenty of help in the cases where it really matters.

Learning How to Listen

No leader has gone far without working on their ability to sit down and listen to what people are saying about the current situation with their organization. This includes both literal listening – in one-on-one sessions, meetings, and so on – as well as paying attention to current trends in your industry. You’ll need to develop the skill to filter out the good information from the bad, and understand how to focus on details that actually matter.

Having your own opinion is obviously important – and you should learn how to stick to it when it matters. But you must also learn to spot the situations where you have to pay more attention to what someone else is saying. Many leaders tend to miss out on valuable input simply because they’re too self-absorbed to consider that someone else might have a better overview of their situation.

Constructive Criticism

On that note, you must also learn to separate constructive criticism from random attacks. You’ll frequently have to deal with both – and the larger your organization grows, the more of that you’ll have to face as well. But some of those negative comments will have some truth behind them, and you must not let them slip past you unnoticed. Otherwise, you risk missing out on various important industry trends that other companies will be quick to catch up on.

And even in cases when you know that you’re right, you need to learn to express that in a constructive manner yourself. Don’t let emotions get the best of you, and use actual facts to present your case to the other party in a reasonable way. This will go a long way in establishing friendships and partnerships with the right people in your industry.

And remember – the final and most important point is that you must always strive to keep growing. One of the biggest mistakes you could make is to start feeling complacent after you’ve seen some moderate success. That’s actually where you’ll be most vulnerable due to feeling so charged up, and if you want to be a good leader, you need to learn to overcome those moments properly.

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The Power of Leading by Example

Every good leader should understand the power of setting a good example and following it yourself. Unfortunately, it’s not rare to see leaders going more along the lines of the motto “do as I say, not as I do”. It’s true – just take one look around most industries and you’ll quickly find numerous such people mismanaging their organizations to no end.

If you want to lead your company the right way, you have to always strive to set the best possible example, and then make this a point to your employees. Sometimes this will require significant effort on your part. But if you value the idea of growing your company and seeing it flourish into something amazing, this is one of the most critical points that you’ll have to work on.

Words Are Cheap

Anyone can make big promises – in fact, many leaders have a nasty habit of doing that too often. But few understand the implications of not living up to those promises and know how to prioritize their work effectively in order to make good on them. If you start saying too much without actually backing it up, people are going to notice this trend sooner or later.

And when they do, their trust in you is going to start going down rapidly. This is something you can’t really recover from once it’s started, and you have to be extremely careful with the promises you’re making. If you’re not confident in your ability to make good on something, then don’t bring it up at all.

Teaching the Right Way to Do Things

People sometimes need a little extra guidance in completing their tasks. Especially those who’re still transitioning to higher positions that involve more responsibility. They might not show it directly, but many of those people will be looking up to you for guidance on what to do and how to do it best. So you have to make sure that your actions make the right impression.

Otherwise, people are going to follow suit on whatever you do. And when it’s bad, this has some obvious negative implications for the company as a whole. If you keep coming in late, underdelivering on your tasks, and trying to shift the blame on others, don’t be surprised when these become the default reactions to problems of most of your employees.

You’ll Learn Something, Too

Leading by example is largely about challenging yourself in new ways. Sometimes you’ll feel uncomfortable approaching a task, mostly because you realize your own low level of competence about it. But confidence is something you absolutely must display as a leader, and many people will look at you under close scrutiny to figure out if you really are living up to your words.

Along the way, you’re going to learn a lot. Especially if the examples you’re trying to set are supposed to challenge your employees as well. By working together, you’ll all develop some new skills and will gain a new perspective into how you should best use them in your daily work.

You’re Creating Better Future Leaders

And remember – sooner or later you’re going to have to move away from this position. Hopefully, it will be because you’re moving up to something even better. But someone will have to fill the void left behind you – and you’re likely looking at that someone on a daily basis right now, perhaps even without realizing it.

If you work hard to set the right example at every step, you’re going to do a lot to ensure that whoever comes after you will truly be fit for the job. Many leaders are struggling with this on a regular basis. Choosing a successor is not as straightforward as it seems. But if you play your cards right, you’ll know exactly who you need to hire in the very near future.

A company is largely represented by its leadership, and setting good examples means that people – both inside and out of the company – are going to see it in a very positive light. Even if you don’t enjoy the public relations game, you still have to maintain your image from time to time, because the company’s own image is tied to that. And there’s really no good way to go about that other than honest, hard work.

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Identifying the Main Sources of Environmental Harm in Production

If you’re trying to be more green in your manufacturing processes, you need to start by identifying the main problems that cause harm in the first place. These will vary from one company to another, and they won’t be immediately obvious in every case. But with enough experience – and enough collected data – you should be able to build a list of the main issues sooner or later.

The Obvious Culprits

There are some things that pretty much every manufacturing facility is guilty of. Environmental pollution tied to smoke and other harmful particles can be easy to track down if you know where to look. In most cases, you’ll probably already know what you’re emitting in the first place. Make sure to check all venues for this – air, water, soil, and anything else that might be relevant to your business.

Also, it might be worth investing in some more modern measurement tools to keep track of the situation in your facilities remotely. This can go a long way towards making your manufacturing processes greener in the long run, especially as you continue to expand your facilities.

Energy Consumption and Origins

Even if you’re not the one polluting the environment directly, that doesn’t mean you’re not contributing to its harm. A production facility typically uses a lot of power, especially in some specific industries. And this power has to come from somewhere – however, most business owners don’t typically pay too much attention to the origin of their own energy.

And sure, green power can cost a bit more, depending on your supplier, but there are various hints that this trend is going to reverse in the not too distant future. As more people start to realize the harmful impacts of certain power production channels, we should see more attention being paid to clean, green energy, which will make it more available to everyone sooner or later.

Reducing Production Waste

Another point to consider is how much waste you’re creating in your typical production run. Sometimes the number might be startling, especially if you’ve never done any analysis on it in the past. Production waste can come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes it boils down to using your resources more efficiently and not squandering them.

Many business owners make the mistake of getting too comfortable in their situations, believing that they have no reason to optimize the resource utilization of their plants. And when you crunch the numbers in the long run, the effects can be quite frightening.

Packaging and Transportation

If you’re producing physical goods, it’s also a good idea to check how much harm you might be contributing to the environment with your packaging and transportation practices. This can be difficult to measure in some cases, especially if you’re relying on external partners for that, but you should do your best to evaluate the situation and figure out ways to reduce your impact on that front.

Sometimes, that alone can have the biggest potential impact on your contribution to the environment. And it’s a good idea to keep it in check in the long run as well, because it’s a factor that can change a lot over time.

Recycling Options

Last but not least, try to consider some more environmentally friendly ways to get rid of your waste. Recycling is becoming more accessible and widespread every day, and we constantly see new options on that front. Even if your waste can’t be recycled efficiently today, keep checking back – you never know when you’re going to see the right kinds of advances on the market!

And when that happens, it’s important to seize it and implement it into your own workflow as quickly as possible. Improving your recycling practices will become increasingly more important in the long run.

Conclusion

Paying attention to all fronts can be difficult when it comes to reducing the environmental harm of your production facilities. But once you get started, it will become increasingly easier to identify the true sources of harm, and you’ll get better and better at getting rid of them. And before you know it, this will be one of the main points of your work. Which is not a bad thing at all – it means that your company is ready for the future!

If you’d like to learn more about Lean Six Sigma and the Environment, check out this FREE online course >>>

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How to Get Started with an Eco-Friendly Manufacturing System

Looking to get started with optimizing your manufacturing system to treat the environment better? There are many ways to approach that, and some will be more viable for your particular corner of the industry. It’s important to align your practices not only with nature, but also with current trends on the market. This will provide your company with the long-term stability that it needs in order to stay relevant in your market, and also to be a sustainable business that minimizes its impact on the environment.

The Current State of the Market

More and more companies are starting to explore the idea of green manufacturing. One quick look around the market is enough to prove that point. And while it might seem like there’s still time to join that trend, there really isn’t. It’s a wave that’s taking over the world by storm, and only those who try to integrate green manufacturing in their processes early on are going to stand a chance later.

Plus, consumers are starting to become much more conscious about their own impact on the environment. And that’s something you should be striving to align with as well, even if just for the better exposure.

How to Plan Efficiently

You need a planned approach. This is a long-term process that will take some time to implement fully, and you’ll have to be patient through the whole ordeal. Not only that, but you must measure your progress along the way to ensure that you’re meeting your initial planned criteria.

It all comes down to setting up an effective plan in the first place. You should ideally be aiming for a specific duration for the whole implementation, and you should have some milestones along the way that you’re aiming to meet. It’s not critical if you overshoot on some of them – the important thing is to have a plan and attempt to follow it.

Reducing Eco Waste Where It Matters

Waste in production is one of the biggest contributors to environmental harm. Even if you’re not literally dumping your garbage in rivers, you might still be contributing a lot to harming the world around you without even realizing it. Even using more resources than you should can have a pretty big impact over a long enough period of time. And that’s something that many companies are guilty of, whether they realize it or not.

Optimizing your processes should therefore be one of your main priorities if you want to see long-term success in your green approach. With some research, you should be able to identify multiple points of action where you could potentially do something to ensure that your company is not so wasteful.

Consulting the Experts

Don’t be afraid to reach out either. This is a common mistake that we unfortunately still see in many businesses around the world. And the more experienced you are, the more likely you will be to trust your own instincts and be too proud to ask for help. And unsurprisingly, this is the one factor that ruins many companies in the long run. Arrogance can permeate in many aspects of your business, and it can be one of the fastest roads to ruin.

A Sustainable Approach

Sustainability is a popular word these days, and for a good reason. Many business owners have started to realize the positive connection between a sustainable model and long-term success. And as some companies on the market attempt to integrate this knowledge into their work, those who don’t are inevitably going to get left behind.

You have the power to decide which side of the fence you’re going to find yourself a few years from now, and making the necessary changes starts right now.

Conclusion

Getting started with making your manufacturing processes more environmentally friendly is the most difficult step in the whole ordeal. After that, pieces will start falling into place one by one, and you’re going to find it easier and easier to keep up with what you’re doing. Make sure to get help along the way whenever you realize that you need it though because refusing to do so can be one of the main factors that will contribute to your eventual downfall. And it happens to more companies than you might expect.

If you’d like to learn more about Lean Six Sigma and the Environment, check out this FREE online course >>>

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Are you looking to improve your manufacturing processes in a way that cater to the environment? You couldn’t have picked a better time. Green manufacturing is in full swing lately, and many companies have been jumping on board the trend. And that’s certainly a good thing to see, because this will likely become one of the most critical aspects of the manufacturing industry in the future.

We’re already seeing some impressive results from companies that have integrated green manufacturing into their workflow. But there are many reasons to believe that we’re going to see even more in the near future.

Measuring Your Impact

Getting started is as simple as measuring your own impact and plotting it over a given period. This will provide you with some initial insights into the way your production currently works, and will give you some valuable information about how you should develop your business further in order to reduce its impact even more.

Thanks to modern technology, measuring any aspect of your manufacturing process is easier than ever, and you have various systems at your disposal to help you with that. Not only that, but you can also easily analyze the data and figure out if there are any interesting underlying patterns.

Gradual Phasing of Harmful Machines and Practices

It’s not the kind of change that happens overnight. Coming to terms with that fact is important, because it’s going to dictate your next actions to a large extent. You need a planned, directed approach that will allow you to get rid of harmful components of your production facilities over time. You should have an end goal, and a plan with a rough timeline.

And even if you don’t manage to stick to that plan 100%, don’t worry. The point is that you should at least know what direction you’re going in, and what steps you need to take to get there.

The Importance of Optimization

Optimizing your processes is more important than ever if your goal is green manufacturing. You can’t rely on outdated systems that consume more resources than they should and don’t produce perfect results. Imperfections should be ironed out as much as possible, and you should aim to maximize your resource utilization. At the same time, you should decrease the overall amount of resources you’re using.

If you do the first though, the second part should fall in place naturally all by itself. After all, using your resources more efficiently is directly tied to how many of them you need in the first place.

Reducing Waste Across the Board

And that’s a point which we can’t stress enough. Waste reduction should be your number one priority when working to make your manufacturing processes greener. There are many types of waste when it comes to manufacturing work, and much of it is more abstract, tied to resource usage and similar points.

Which means that you’ll need a very good overview of your current manufacturing practices if you want to know where to strike in order to improve them later on. This brings us back to what we said earlier about collecting and analyzing data. This will be one of the most important points of making your manufacturing greener.

Aligning with the Future

Don’t forget to pay attention to the way the market is shifting either. There are many trends that come and go, and green manufacturing is a field that’s particularly susceptible to this. Just because you’re using the industry-standard best practices right now doesn’t mean that these will still be valid a few years from now. Sometimes that timeline is even in the order of several months.

But as long as you stay informed, there should be few surprises along the way. Just make sure that you’re flexible enough to be able to change your practices in a timely manner.

Conclusion

Optimizing your production facilities is never easy. But when you have a specific end goal in mind – like making your production greener overall – it’s simpler to break things down to fundamental points and address them one by one. You just need to ensure that you’re working with all the information required to make the right decisions and pay attention to how things are changing over time. The rest comes down to gathering enough experience and using it correctly.

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Why a Green Approach to Manufacturing Is Important to Your Business and not Just the Environment

Working in a green manner is becoming more and more important in various industries, and it’s a topic that many companies try to study in deep detail these days. And it makes sense, too – it brings multiple benefits to the table, not just for the environment, but also for the company itself. When done right, you can gain a lot in the long run by integrating some greener principles in your workflow. But you have to be prepared with some patience because it’s a gradual process that takes some time.

Sustainability Is Stability

One of the best benefits of green manufacturing is that it improves the long-term stability of your own business. Companies nowadays are starting to become more and more conscious about the environment, and so are customers. And you need to align yourself to these trends if you want to survive in the future.

Plus, green manufacturing often relies on sustainable production methods that can translate to much better market stability later on. Especially if you work with limited resources that companies will likely be fighting over not too long from now.

You Need to Align Yourself with the Trends

This brings us to another important point. As we said above, customers have started to change their attitudes very noticeably when it comes to green practices, and this has already reflected on the businesses of multiple companies.

And the most noticeable effect is that those who fail to align themselves with green principles properly tend to get dragged down at some point. As people continue to try aligning themselves with nature in their daily habits, this will reflect on the work of the companies that serve them as well.

Optimizing Your Workflow

You’ll find lots of opportunities for optimization in the green corner of the manufacturing industry these days. There are many things you can do to make your processes work faster, be more reliable, and even more predictable, all by switching to greener production methods.

Part of that is because you’ll always be using cutting edge technology and modern solutions to tackle the problems you’re dealing with. Many new inventions in the manufacturing sector recently have been born exactly out of a need to service specific needs of that sector in a greener manner. And judging by current trends, this will only get more pronounced in the near future.

The Value of Reducing Waste

Identifying and reducing waste is a key component of running a manufacturing business correctly. Unfortunately, many leaders still don’t understand the value of this activity and keep working in ways that create lots of unnecessary waste that could have been avoided. This is not just about physical waste either. Many companies end up wasting a lot of time and other resources on processes that are largely ineffective and could be optimized.

And that’s a major part of certain philosophies in manufacturing, too. Unfortunately, it’s not that trivial to identify where waste is coming from in your organization. And even when you do know, dealing with might require a more careful approach than you think. But by switching over to green technology, you’ll have the benefit of having waste reduction integrated into your business on a fundamental level.

How to Get Started Properly

With all that said, make sure that you start off on the right foot if you decide to integrate green technology in your manufacturing processes. There are many points that you’ll need to consider before even making any investments, and it’s important to have a good long-term plan if you want to avoid some of the common problems that come up along the way.

That’s because as great as green manufacturing can be in the long run, it can also be costly to implement in the beginning, and lacking a good plan can often mean dragging down your company financially quite a lot.

Conclusion

The true value of green manufacturing is in the long-term benefits it provides to the companies that utilize it correctly. It takes time for the positive effects to start manifesting, but once they do, you’ll be on a roll. It will get easier and easier to maintain that progress over time, especially if you learn from your actions and integrate that knowledge into new versions of your processes.

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several LED energy saving light bulbs over the old incandescent, use of economical and environmentally friendly light bulb concept, the choice of old or new

Gradually Improving Your Processes to Decrease Harm

Understanding the gradual nature of improving your manufacturing processes is important if you’re planning to do anything in that direction. It’s not the kind of change that you can expect to happen over a short period of time, and you’ll have to work hard to achieve it. There’s also the chance that you’ll fail at some steps along the way, and you have to account for that as well.

And when your goal is to be more environmentally friendly, any changes you’re introducing to your production model should be aligned with not only current market trends, but also information that you’ve been collecting about your business over time.

Starting Small

Small changes are the easiest to implement, and they can quickly stack up to have a huge impact on your business as a whole. There are many areas to investigate in this regard. From any direct pollution that you might be producing, to resource waste, to ensure that everyone in the company is on board with whatever changes you’re making.

But if you’re persistent enough, soon many of those small points are going to start evolving into more major ones. You’re going to discover which areas of your business are truly important to address when you want to make it greener, and you’ll have a lot of data to back up your decision.

Planning for the Future

You should also know what kinds of moves you’re going to make at each next step, at least in the near future. Improving your business to be more green is a process where every step depends on the ones before it, and you have to carefully consider the implications of each action you’re taking. Otherwise, you might find yourself stuck with no viable way of progressing.

At least, not without undoing a lot of your previous work. That’s the exact situation that many companies find themselves in, and it can quickly ruin your business before you even realize what’s wrong.

The Importance of Modular Design

Which brings us to another important point. You have to do your best to break down your company into small, fundamental components that can be easily replaced when needed. This will minimize the damage when you reach a point where you realize that you have to undo something you’ve done previously. If your company is designed the right way, this doesn’t have to be such a harmful act, although it will still hurt a little.

Ensuring Everyone Is on Board

Just because you’re fully committed to the idea of making your company greener doesn’t necessarily mean that all your employees agree with that. Sometimes, you might have internal conflicts that prevent you from realizing the full potential of your plans, and you might not even know that anything is wrong on that front until it’s too late!

This is a common problem in larger organizations where it can be more difficult to provide adequate oversight of all parts of the business. Be careful, stay watchful, and ensure that everyone is on board with any changes you’re introducing to your business model.

Correcting Past Mistakes

You might eventually come to the realization that the company has made a major mistake at some point in the past. It’s never a good idea to double down on those issues and hope for the best – and yet that’s exactly what we see from many business owners, even supposedly experienced ones. Whenever a mistake comes up, you have to work hard to correct it as quickly as possible.

Letting these problems pile up can only make them worse in the future, and this can happen more quickly than you would believe. Especially if you’re acting in a more aggressive manner with regards to converting your business to a greener one.

Conclusion

Converting your business to a greener one takes time and patience, and it’s an error-prone process. But as long as you’re determined and have the right sources of information, all it takes is persistence. Having a modular approach to your business can be very helpful when it comes to eliminating past mistakes, as it can allow you to correct them without affecting any other aspect of your business. And that alone can be an extremely powerful tool when it comes to optimization.

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Understanding lean management on a fundamental level starts by learning its core principles, and learning how to comply with them in your own work. There are various ways to deepen your understanding on the subject, but it’s something you have to keep informing yourself about on a regular basis.

That’s because lean – and lean management – is a constantly evolving field, and it’s one where you can’t really rely on your previously acquired skills to remain valid forever. You have to keep pushing yourself, and this requires persistence and motivation. If you want to get started with lean as fast as possible, you should take a look at some of the fundamental underlying principles, and ensure that you understand them in detail.

Waste Reduction

Identifying waste and removing it from the workflow is a critical element to any lean methodology. It’s not as easy as it looks though. Figuring out where waste is generated is about more than just crunching some numbers to see if your company is moving in the right direction. You have to actively question points that might impact the organization’s overall capacity to produce useful results, and address those specifically.

It can be very difficult to identify waste correctly in some environments too. This might sometimes require additional expertise, and the outlook of someone who has seen enough problems of this type in their past. Things can get even more complicated when considering the fact that waste can sometimes be inherently tied to some of the production going on at the facility in the first place.

Flow

Flow is inherently tied to waste – one of the main problems that lean philosophies are commonly trying to address. Flow is basically defined as the organization’s momentum in moving forward, and its ability to create value without any interruptions or slowdowns in the process. Flow can be extremely important to many organizations, especially those that constantly rely on a steady stream of income in order to do their work.

Pull

Flow has to be guaranteed in some way – and that’s where pull comes in. the concept of pull is closely tied to creating work that leads flow behind it. In other words, leaders should avoid certain actions that could lead to the reduction of flow in the organization, which in turn means that they need to focus on improving its pull.

This can be done in various ways. Organizing work ahead of time to ensure that you don’t do anything more than what’s necessary to drive progress forward is a good example. Addressing issues with the company’s pull is one of the top priorities of most lean managers, and there’s a good reason so much of their work is tied to that specifically.

Striving for Perfection

As a lean manager, perfection should be your ultimate goal in every aspect of your work. This might seem obvious, but it goes beyond simply delivering “good” results. You have to go out of your way to ensure that you’re meeting every possible criteria in your industry and in your organization specifically. What’s more, you have to constantly adjust those goals and keep striving for perfection in ways that did not exist before.

This can only happen by aligning your work with constant research, about your field in particular and about lean philosophies as a whole. You have to always be on the lookout for ways to improve your production capabilities and make sure that everything you do is aligned with the idea of achieving perfection in the long run.

Improving Value

Much like waste, value can be a bit difficult to define, especially in some industries. But improving the value delivered by your organization in its work is one of the most crucial points of developing that company in an appropriate manner. You have to identify the root elements that define the value of your work and then focus on improving those as much as possible.

Conclusion

There’s more to lean management than that – much more in fact. There’s a good reason why lean specialists are highly sought after and compensated so well. The field is constantly evolving, and it requires a determined, educated approach of the kind that only the best can provide. And if you’re a leader who cares about the future of your organization, it’s important to integrate those principles into its work early on.

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Lean management is known to be a very positive factor in the work of many organizations. And yet, many leaders seem largely unaware of its positive implications and don’t understand why they need it in their organizations in the first place. And while it’s true that the exact benefits of lean management can be a bit difficult to point out at a glance, it’s not actually that complicated once you dig in a little.

• Improved Efficiency

One of the most noticeable effects you’re going to see over any period of time is an increase in the overall efficiency of the organization. This can be reflected in various points of its work, depending on how you’re measuring success and progress in the first place. But any way you cut it, efficiency is going to be on an upward trend soon after integrating lean management into your company.

This is easy to measure with various tools, and doing so is actually crucial for the long-term success of your organization. In-depth analytics and evaluation of the company’s work are going to prove critical for its performance in the future, and you’ll want to get these points sorted out as quickly as possible if you haven’t already.

• Better Quality Control

Quality control is directly tied to productivity in most circumstances, but it’s not very easy to improve one without affecting the other. When working under lean management, you’ll quickly realize that quality control will become one of the top priorities of the organization as a whole, and something everyone will be striving for on different levels.

And when you’ve improved the quality control within the company, you’ll inevitably get to a stage where you produce less waste. But more on that below.

• A More Personal Approach

Lean management is frequently associated with a more personal approach to professional development and growth, and there’s a good reason for that – it just works. A good lean manager will know when it’s time to get down on the level of the common employee so they can get a better overview of their current concerns with the organization.

This is something that requires some level of humility though, and it’s not something that every leader is capable of right off the bat.

• Reduced Waste

Waste is a big problem for many organizations. But what’s more problematic for some of them is that they may not even realize that they have any issues in this regard in the first place. This is especially common in industries where waste is treated as a part of the standard way things work.

This kind of mindset can not only be very harmful, but it can be difficult to defeat if it’s already deeply entrenched in the organization. Waste reduction can be approached in many different ways, depending on the specific work of the company, but it’s something that has to be taken very seriously by people on all levels.

• Better Morale

It’s no secret that lean organizations tend to enjoy higher levels of employee satisfaction. Do you know why though? It’s not actually that hard to point out some potential reasons for this phenomenon, looking at the typical lean company out there. Promoting a better interaction between employees and their managers can obviously improve the way both see each other, and can lead to better trust and more openness.

That, in turn, will inevitably lead to better productivity across the board, while also improving employee morale on an individual level, as well as across entire teams.

• Strong Future Prospects

Lean is one of the hottest topics right now. And that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Quite on the contrary, as more and more people keep discovering the benefits of lean management, we’re likely going to see even more organizations jumping on board of this trend and adopting these principles in their own work.

And that’s a great thing for everyone. Especially companies that make it a point to adopt lean methodologies in their work early on. Those who pay attention to these trends right now will be in a much better position in the near future, and when the whole market revolves around lean methodologies, these companies will already be in leading positions in their own respective fields.

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5 Qualities of a Lean Manager

Lean has been a hot topic in many industries lately, and the attention towards it will likely continue to grow in the coming years. There are many reasons for that, but it usually boils down to one simple truth: it just works. Every leader who has successfully implemented lean methodologies in the work of their own organization has come to the exact same realization. In the end, it’s something that improves the work of the organization in numerous ways.

What exactly defines a good lean manager though? What kinds of qualities should one be striving to develop in themselves, and what should we look for in our own leaders to figure out if they are on the right track? A “true” lean manager can be a bit difficult to define in concrete terms. But there are some qualities that can be identified in pretty much anyone in this position.

• Honesty

A true lean leader has to be honest – with themselves and with everyone else. This is harder than it might seem because a lot goes into honesty that’s not immediately obvious on the surface. You need to have an objective outlook about the current state of the company, for example. Don’t make decisions driven by a clouded view on how things really are, because this is the fastest road to long-term ruin.

• Respect

Respect is another point that often flies over the heads of inexperienced leaders, and it can lead to huge problems in the long run. We don’t just mean basic social courtesy. True respect means paying attention to the opinions and ideas of others, even when those people are on a completely different level of the hierarchy from you. It’s not rare for arrogant leaders to completely miss a hint about something that could be very beneficial to the company as a whole, just because it came from someone who sits much lower than them on the totem pole.

• Patience

The old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is something every leader needs to follow very closely. Patience is a virtue for everyone, but it’s critical when you’re in a position of leadership in an organization. Changes tend to take time at this scale, and you have to be patient and allow them to happen before making any more moves.

A common mistake made by impatient leaders is to stack up one action after another, disregarding the consequences of their previous ones. After all, if you don’t see results already, how bad could things get when those results manifest themselves later on? It turns out, it can actually get quite bad. Being patient is the number one way to prevent issues like these.

• Humbleness

Much like being honest, learning to be humble is another virtue that you’ll need to incorporate in your leadership on a deep, fundamental level. You need to understand that sometimes things are beyond your control, and that’s fine. You can’t change absolutely everything. But you have to always remain in control over the things that are up to you, and ensure that you learn from your past mistakes as well.

That last bit is particularly important. Making a mistake is fine – it can happen to anyone. But failing to learn from your own is something that can lead to a vicious cycle of repeating the exact same mistakes you’ve made in the past.

• Desire to Improve

Continuous improvement is at the core of the lean mindset. And it goes beyond the organization itself. A good lean leader must have the desire to constantly push themselves to improve and to become better and better at what they do. Identifying your weaknesses and spotting mistakes in your own work is the best way to go about that. It will be hard at first, especially if you’re not used to being so critical towards yourself.

But in the long run, this is the only way you’re going to see any real improvement in your company. You have to keep pushing forward to develop your own skills, iron out your problems, and learn new things that you can incorporate in your work as best as you can. This will all come together at some point in the future in ways that you could not have imagined.

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Lean Management vs Lean Production

With all the talk about lean methodologies lately, there have been some major discussions on the topic, including some debates over the true meaning of lean management, and its relation to other aspects of lean, like production. And while it can be hard for a beginner to define the exact boundaries of the different components of lean, understanding them in depth is important for those who want to implement these methodologies into their own companies.

Contrary to popular belief, lean management and lean production are actually two separate fields with unique characteristics and goals, and it’s important to realize where the main differences are.

Basic Overview

Lean management and lean production are directly linked on a fundamental level. One drives the other, although they can also be present within an organization in a separated state. The important point is that the people in charge of the organization are aware of those differences and know how to identify the separate components of lean methodologies in their own work.

It’s also important to note that both lean management as well as lean production are constantly going through changes that improve them in various ways, and some of the older elements established in those philosophies are no longer valid after some iterations.

What Is Lean Management?

Lean management is the general idea of driving an organization forward towards constant improvement and pushing its boundaries in different aspects. The main point of lean management is to ensure that the organization is constantly moving towards progress and that there are no regressions in any of its departments. It requires a constant overview of the entire organization, and a good ability to spot patterns and identify important data points.

An important thing to note about lean management is that it’s typically focused on making smaller changes which can stack up better over time. Some management principles attempt to make wide, sweeping changes in every iteration that end up altering the state of the company significantly. But lean is a completely different idea.

What Is Lean Production?

Lean production, on the other hand, is mainly focused on reducing waste within the production process, and ensuring that all resources are utilized to their full potential. This might seem redundant in the context of typical management principles, but it’s actually quite unique in certain aspects. Lean production has various established methods for identifying waste and removing it over time. However, they take time to master, and some of them keep evolving as well.

There are several types of waste primarily identified in lean production and they all require different approaches to resolve. A good lean manager must have a solid, fundamental understanding of the principles behind lean manufacturing, and know how to identify the different types of waste whenever they arise in their production facilities.

Applying Principles Correctly

This brings us to another important point. Understanding the core principles of lean production and lean management is one thing, but having the right mindset to apply them properly is a completely different story. This is in fact what sets apart true leaders from the rest, and it’s a point that’s very important to consider. Some managers only have a theoretical understanding of lean principles. And that’s not bad by itself – but it does become a problem when those same leaders attempt to implement these same principles without properly understanding how they function in practice.

This requires years of experience, and there’s a good reason why lean specialists are so highly sought after, and so well compensated. And if you value the progress of your company in the long run, this is one of the best investments you could make as well.

Conclusion

Understanding the differences between lean management and lean production is a critical point of running a modern organization correctly. Unfortunately, many leaders today have only a superficial understanding of these principles, and even worse, they don’t put any effort into improving themselves in this regard. This is a continuous battle that has to be approached in a determined, persistent manner. You can’t expect to just master those principles once and then call it a day. Continuous improvement starts with the company’s actual leadership, and that’s a concept that many leaders are still struggling to understand properly.

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What Is Lean Management?

Lean management is a point of major importance for many organizations across the globe, and it’s likely going to become even more critical in the near future. As people continue to pay more and more attention to the field, we’re also seeing some new developments in it, and various old ideas have been put to the test, refined, or taken out completely.

Understanding the important points of lean management is crucial for any responsible leader who wants to push their organization forward. It’s a tricky topic to get into if you’re not familiar with it already, but it’s definitely very rewarding in the long run.

Basic Concepts

Lean management is a leadership philosophy that’s mainly focused on improving the company in the long run. It might occasionally require making decisions that have a questionable short-term impact on the organization, but a good lean leader should be able to identify those situations, analyze them correctly, and extract some valuable information from them in the end.

There are some conflicting opinions in some circles regarding the exact definition of lean management and what it encompasses. But most experts agree on at several points that encompass its main principles.

Important Principles

Lean management is driven by several ideas. The main point is to create value for the company over time, and this is done by continuous improvement. Various processes are constantly put under analysis to figure out if they can be adjusted to perform better, and the organization as a whole is regularly evaluated to ensure that it meets all current criteria for its growth.

Identifying value and focusing on creating it in the long run is important for a lean leader. Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as it seems. The exact definition of value can vary wildly from one company to another, and in some cases, it can be a more abstract concept that requires years of experience in the corresponding industry in order to figure it out correctly.

Working with Employees on a Personal Level

Lean managers should also develop a habit of working more closely with their employees and taking in their concerns on a personal level. Any good leader should be doing that by default, of course. But taking the time to sit down with someone and evaluate their current concerns on a personal level is a unique approach that only lean managers can apply properly.

In the long run, this alone can have the biggest potential impact on the organization if done right. It can not only lead to the discovery of problems that are not immediately obvious on the surface, but it can have various other positive effects too. Raising employee morale is a commonly reported one.

Identifying Root Causes of Problems

Another important point of lean management is that it’s supposed to always look at the root of a problem for its solution. Many modern management styles focus on band-aid solutions that patch up problems in the short term, allowing a manager to focus on something else for the time being while knowing that the actual solution of the problem will become someone else’s task eventually.

That’s not the case with lean management, where a lot of importance is given to identifying root causes of problems and attacking them directly. It can be difficult to get to the bottom of a problem when it encompasses multiple parts of the company and spans across several departments. But if you want to see your company growing unimpeded in the future, that’s pretty much the only way to go about it. On the bright side, lean management offers plenty of attractive solutions for problems like these, so all you have to do is research into them.

Conclusion

Lean management is not very easy to define at a glance, even for people who are experienced with it. But understanding its core principles, and knowing how to apply them in the work of your own organization, are critical points if you want to ensure its long-term success. A lot can go wrong when managing an organization of any size, even a smaller one. Knowing how to anticipate these issues and deal with them in an efficient manner is one of the main defining features of a good lean manager.

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Pushing a Stagnating Company to Innovation

No company on the market is really insured against the possibility of finding itself in a stagnating situation. And when that happens, many leaders usually instinctively respond by trying to push things forward in full speed, often ignoring some internal safety measures that are there for a reason. It’s important to know what to do when you’re dealing with a situation like this, and more importantly, what not to do. Because in the end, your decisions at this stage of the company’s development can easily impact its whole future.

Getting to the Root Cause

One of the most important things to do first is to identify the root cause of the problem. Often, when a company has issues with stagnation, it can be traced back to a few common causes. A struggling management without a clear vision for the future is often one of the most notable problems, and it can also be difficult to deal with.

It can take some time to properly identify where the problem is coming for, so you should start the investigation process as early as possible. And in every case, make sure that you’re working with as much real data as possible, instead of guesses and estimates.

Small Steps

You shouldn’t expect this to be a fast process. Even if you do everything right at every step, it’s still going to take a while to see the company progressing and moving in the right direction. To this end, you should be patient and be prepared to wait until things pick back up. Don’t try to rush the process at any point, because this can only lead to more issues.

In fact, if you push too hard, you might even stall the whole process. This has happened to various companies in the past and is a common problem that can be difficult to avoid.

Cutting the Dead Weight

You’ll often come to the realization that most of the company’s problems are caused by some dead weight. This can have many different forms, but it has to be dealt with in any case. This can be challenging when it comes to people. If you realize that certain employees are the main factor holding back the progress of your organization, the obvious solution is to get rid of them.

But this can have some unexpected results across the whole organization, and it’s something you should be very careful about. Approach this in a determined, but sensitive manner, and be ready to have lots of hard conversations with your employees.

Tracking Progress

You should also ensure that your actions are having the right effect in the long run. This can only be done with sufficient tracking, data collection and analysis. There are lots of solutions on that front nowadays, and it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with them and figure out how to best integrate them into your own work.

In the end, the important thing is that you end up with an objective overview of your current situation that’s driven mainly by hard data and analytics. This can allow you to move in the right direction much more easily.

Maintaining the Momentum

Another important factor is to ensure that you keep things going after starting once. Momentum can be difficult to attain, but it can make things easier later on if you have been moving in the right direction to begin with. But keep in mind that sometimes you might need to fuel the fire of progress manually in additional steps. It’s not a process that you can just complete once and call it a day. It’s something ongoing that will require a lot of effort from you in the long run.

On the bright side, the effects tend to stack up. So once you’ve got the ball rolling, it can be easier and easier to keep things running in the right direction. And you’ll find that maintaining an innovative approach in your organization is not that hard when you have the right underlying foundation. Once you have things going, you’ll keep discovering new opportunities to maintain the company in a good condition, and you’ll come to many important realizations about what it means to have an innovative company in the first place.

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How to Control Innovation in Your Organization

Being innovative is directly linked to an organization’s ability to survive in a rapidly developing market. At the same time, it comes with many implications that are not immediately obvious, and it can be quite difficult to keep everything in check. You need solid experience and a determined approach. Above all though, you need to understand the implications of innovation on each aspect of your company’s work, and know how to properly control what’s going on.

Not Everything New Is Worth Adopting

The first thing you should realize is that just because something is innovative, doesn’t mean that you should necessarily adopt it. Various new technologies and methodologies end up being short-lived fads as people discover their weaknesses. And if you invest too much in the wrong innovation, it can cost you a lot. You need to maintain an optimal approach to this, and always keep the company’s wellbeing as a top priority.

Ongoing Market Research and Analysis

Researching the market on a regular basis is one of the best ways to avoid surprises. You should know what trends are currently popular, and what you might expect in the coming months/years. Modern technology offers plenty of solutions for gathering detailed information about the market and running it through complex analytical systems too. It’s a good idea to take advantage of that as much as you can.

Have a Fallback Plan

Even if you plan ahead as much as possible though, sometimes things are still going to go wrong. You can’t predict every single factor that will come in play when implementing new technologies into your organization. What you can do, however, is ensure that you have a fallback plan that you can use in case things get really bad. You should ideally have some way of recovering from a situation that has cost you a lot of time and money without impacting the overall performance of the organization.

Sure, that’s easier said than done. But it’s important that you get a grip on these concepts as quickly as possible, because no company can survive for a long time without a good backup plan for all of its major changes.

Coordinate with Other Companies

Try to align what you’re doing with your partners on the market as well. Even your competitors may be useful sources of information in the right circumstances. You need to make sure that anything you’re doing is not too much out of line for the market as a whole. Sure, sometimes this is not necessarily a bad thing. If you know what you’re doing, you may have an ace up your sleeve that other companies haven’t considered at all.

But in most cases, you should check your actions at every step and ensure that you’re not straying too far from the average market norms. Otherwise you’re going to run into a lot of trouble later on when it comes to building partnerships.

Get Constant Internal Feedback

Last but not least, remember the importance of adequate internal feedback. People within your organization will have a thing or two to say about the way you’re integrating new technologies and promoting innovation. They will also have some comments about the technologies themselves. Sometimes, a new solution might clash significantly with the way things work at the company, leading to serious dissatisfaction among your employees.

You need to be on top of those issues whenever they happen and make it clear to everyone in your organization that you have their best interests in mind, and that your actions are motivated by a desire to improve the company as a whole. Have some viable communication channels open and keep checking up on them to ensure that you’re not missing anything important.

If you do this right, innovation can lead to huge improvements in your organization. Handle it wrongly though, and it can do more harm than good. Many people underestimate the potential negative effects of implementing innovative approaches in their organizations. You should never fall for that trap, and always ensure that you have a good overview of the big picture. And if you see a need to backtrack, then you should take seize any opportunity available that can get the job done with a minimal impact on the company.

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