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This is a self-study guide for facilitators of rapid process improvement workshops that helps anyone who feels like they aren't truly gaining the full results of improvement initiatives and kaizen events. They know they can do better, but don't know how. The author, an experienced facilitator in government and nonprofits, speaks to the facilitator through coaching notes and actual workshop documents and techniques so the reader can fully understand how greater results are achieved. This guide takes the reader through a step-by-step path of a newly created workshop agenda. The author has parsed the workshop path into more manageable parts, easier for both the facilitator and the team. These parts split the improvement work into two sections: "removing the unnecessary" and "smoothing out the flow." "Smoothing out the flow" is divided further into: When the work is coming in When the product/person is going through the process How the work is performed In addition, the author includes newly created tools and training content. For example, a data-gathering table points the facilitator to what data need to be collected when. Training for the team includes making sure they understand the structure of a process as well as to instruct them and define how a Lean process actually functions. This distinction is important because all improvements are not necessarily Lean improvements. Several bodies of knowledge are incorporated into this guide--not only Lean and Six Sigma, but internal auditing, organizational development, and statistics. Essentially, this guide includes tips, nuances, and original tools that are missing from the traditional training of facilitators of kaizen events. It provides enough information for the facilitator to think in a creative way.

Continuous improvement process. --- Leadership.

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Currently, the challenge for manufacturing organizations is how to achieve their expected profit by continuously improving productivity or reducing costs. Manufacturing organizations have been using different improvement approaches to achieving cost reduction and productivity improvement for years by eliminating various losses and waste structures, such as excess inventory, excessive workforce, excessive capacity, excessive utility consumption, and so on. But is the problem solved? Unfortunately, no! Often manufacturing companies focus on maximizing the flow and meeting customer needs but forget their real aim - to make a profit for their stakeholders. Too many organizations meet customer expectations by seeking to continuously synchronize the flow to market demand but forget to check that they are doing it profitably enough to ensure business continuity and prosperity. When the financial results show that they are not so profitable, it is already too late. Moreover, the strategic direction of systematic improvements according to the sales trend - depending on the current degree of production capacity utilization and its dynamic effects on cost structures - is deficient in many manufacturing companies. So, would the failure of strategic and profitable systematic improvements be an option? Of course not! If the ultimate goal of the organization is to create target profit for stakeholders, then the behavior and strategic systematic improvements must be directed to those scenarios, strategies, tasks, problems, and "production levers" that are best based on creating the target profit. That's what Strategic Kaizen thinking does - the simultaneous and consistent achievement of systematic operational and financial improvements in a strategic and operational manner. It achieves both synchronous operations at market demand by fulfilling takt time and profitable operations in accordance with profit demand by fulfilling takt profit. In short, the Strategic Kaizen mission is striving for the fulfillment of the ideal state of operations called synchronous profitable operations. In this book, the author, while presenting in detail the seven processes of Strategic Kaizen methodology, exposes the answer to historically incomplete thinking of productivity improvements for target profitability. The uniqueness of the book is reinforced by the detailed presentation of the successful application of the Strategic Kaizen thinking over the years in two multinational manufacturing organizations operating in highly competitive markets, addressing the synchronous profitable operations for both the sales increase scenario and the sales decrease scenario. Moreover, it presents examples of the practical application of the "white-collar" Strategic Kaizen. Essentially, by adopting the Strategic Kaizen methodology presented in detail in this book to consistently achieve the ideal state of a manufacturing organization, organizations will enter a new paradigm of thinking of strategic improvements - Strategic Kaizen thinking - to meet annual and multiannual target profits in a unique and effective way that operates according to its own strategic and operational management system.

Continuous improvement process.

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The Sensei Way at Work follows in the wake of dozens of successful business books on the Toyota production system, lean enterprise, and the Toyota Way, yet it is unique. It identifies the five keys that sustain successful lean production in Western enterprises--a challenge that has stymied business leaders, managers, and lean coaches for decades. The first reason for our frequent inability to sustain the initial gains of lean startups is a misunderstanding of the Japanese term "kaizen mind." Many mistranslate it as a "hunger" for business efficiency and cost reduction. In fact, kaizen mind is a psychology of "mindfulness" joined with "creativity." And once evoked by a sensei, it can be applied (without training) when a leader mandates that employees and managers solve quality problems and redesign the work together. The second reason is our need to develop new change leaders who know "the way." A sensei immerses prospects in a series of challenges until they learn to do the work of change with the mind of a leader, that is, from the states of presence, flow, and compassion. Lasting organizational transformation becomes possible, even inevitable, when its leaders learn the five keys and realize "one big thing" in the Sensei Way.

Production control. --- Continuous improvement process.

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In this third book of the Shingo Model series, Continuous Improvement focuses on five of the Shingo Guiding Principles: seek perfection, embrace scientific thinking, focus on process, assure quality at the source, and improve flow and pull. Each chapter in Continuous Improvement is designed to enhance your comprehension of one or more aspects of the Continuous Improvement dimension of the Shingo Model and to increase your understanding of how the dimension interrelates with and complements the other principles in the Shingo Model. Ultimately, this explanation grounds the technical science of continuous improvement with a powerful social science that focuses on people development. It is this combination that creates the opportunity for improvement to be truly continuous. Because tacit learning is critical to deepening your continuous improvement knowledge, "Reader Challenges" are included throughout the text to encourage you to apply what you have read within the context of your own organization. This hands-on practice is necessary to understand the interrelatedness of principles, systems, and tools that are inherent in the Shingo Model. The Shingo Institute recognizes that "the transformation from traditional philosophy and practices to organizational excellence does not occur without the courage, creativity, and persistence of everyone in the organization--from executives to managers to team members on the frontline."

Organizational effectiveness. --- Continuous improvement process.

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Kaizen Kanban is a guide to creating prioritized project pipelines and setting up improvement boards to maximize business success through the execution of continuous improvement projects.

Continuous improvement process. --- Project management --- Quality control.