lean work improvement

The power of lean planning

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    string(1440) "The construction industry has a reputation for delays, bad quality and unsafe working conditions. This makes it a prime candidate for the implementation of lean principles and techniques. The idea of 'lean construction' has been around since the early 1990s, when a group of academics in California started to look at opportunities for the application of lean in the sector. One of the results of this early work was the introduction of the Last Planner System to better manage construction sites.

The lean construction movement soon spread to other parts of the world, starting with the UK - where it influenced a number of organizations and large projects, like the construction of St Pancras station in London. Large construction companies quickly took on lean management. Like in other industries, at the beginning the adoption of lean focused heavily on the application of tools, whereas more recently the strategic importance of lean management has been recognized by the industry.

Technology is providing new opportunities for the sector, with 3D and 4D software tools taking the lead. Technological advances, coupled with the adoption of solid improvement practices, like lean construction methodology, in the construction industry, means we can design and build better, safer and lasting buildings - also guaranteeing working infrastructure for our increasingly urban world."
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FeaturesMar 12, 2020
The TenneT team
FEATURE – A Dutch transmission system operator is using Lean Planning – built around the Last Planner System – to better manage its complex infrastructure projects.

Sorting out sourcing

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A common problem that practitioners trying to bring lean to services encounter is the difficulty to identify “the work” – whereas in manufacturing the product is in front of everyone’s eyes, in service organizations it is often hidden behind paperwork or a computer screen. Once the work is clearly visible, however, the opportunities for improvement are plentiful. To date, we have seen thousands of organizations striving to lean out the service they provide customers: from restaurants chains in the United States and China to a group of bakeries in Barcelona, from call centers to hotels, the application of lean services ideas can have an extraordinary impact on our economies. Especially if we consider that the service industry accounts for more than three-fifths of the global GDP and employs more than one-third of the global workforce.

Lean thinking is naturally a fit for the service industry, because of its focus on constantly delighting customers and on providing them with value-adding products."
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FeaturesFeb 20, 2020
Carolina Moraes, Priscilla Ribeiro, Alaine Soares, and Tatiane Zutin
FEATURE – The Sourcing team at insurance company SulAmérica tells us about how they were able to transform the process in their department in order to become more efficient in dealing with their workload.

Predictable vs unpredictable work

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FeaturesFeb 6, 2020
Dave Brunt
FEATURE – It is a common misconception that our work is too unpredictable to fit into a standardized approach. The author debunks this myth. 

Extracting waste from our process

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Case studiesJan 23, 2020
Rodnei Yogui
CASE STUDY – In a Brazilian insurance company, a team worked hard to streamline the revision of dental claims – a great example of Lean Thinking in an administrative process. 

Making hard work easier

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FeaturesJan 9, 2020
Mark Reich
FEATURE – Reflecting on some of the work he’s recently observed, the author discusses what lean thinking teaches us about making life easier for the value creators in our organizations.

Attorney at lean

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Case studiesNov 21, 2019
Eulalia Malimpensa
CASE STUDY – A boutique law firm in Milan has initiated a lean transformation to turn around its processes, improve service to its clients and make life easier for the team.  

Project management woes

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FeaturesNov 18, 2019
Severino Abad
FEATURE – What are the main problems people encounter when running a project? The author ran a survey with 126 people over two years and presents the results of his research in this article.

Safari, so good

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Case studiesNov 14, 2019
Sharon Visser
CASE STUDY – This company in Botswana has embraced lean thinking passionately to build the capacity and ability to deal with higher demand for its converted vehicles. The author tells us about their journey.

What is kaizen?

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FeaturesOct 31, 2019
Roberto Priolo
ROUNDUP – This month, we look at the most effective lean improvement approach – kaizen – by looking back at some of our best articles on the subject.

Slashing onboarding time for new developers

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    string(1476) "Improvement methodologies have been used in the software world for a very long time, with approaches like Agile and Lean digital methodology playing a key role in speeding up the development of digital products. Agile principles and ideas - like Scrum and its way of structuring teams and organizing the work - have found their ways into many a lean company. Lean digital thinking and the Toyota Production System, in turn, have greatly influenced the development of these approaches.

Lean Digital is the methodology by which companies apply lean principles to the development process of new digital products.

The world of startups and entrepreneurship has also drawn a lot of inspiration from lean management. Eric Ries' best-selling book The Lean Startup offers a framework for quick experimentation and validation of learning that is often viewed as an interpretation of lean's PDCA cycle - and the very idea of involving the customer at different stages of the process clearly reminds of the fundamental lean idea of listening to the Voice of the Customer.

Despite this great level of cross-contamination, however, a disconnect still exists between the world of 'traditional lean' and that of young, digital companies. A few pioneering organizations such as softrware company Theodo are trying to bridge that gap by solidly applying lean thinking to their digital work. This is a new frontier for lean thinking."
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FeaturesSep 30, 2019
Clément Hannicq
BUILDING BRIDGES – Using kaizen, a team at Theodo was able to reduce the time necessary to install a project on a new developer’s computer from three weeks to twelve minutes.

When lean takes off

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FeaturesSep 12, 2019
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – The author visits the Parisian airport of Orly to learn about a pilot project (pun intended) that aims to tackle the late departure of flights using lean thinking.

Moving forward

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InterviewsSep 5, 2019
Gabriel Lam
INTERVIEW – This moving company in Singapore has taken its first steps down the lean road, reminding us that translating your strategy into small, actionable improvements people can make at the gemba is the way to a transformation.

Where are we in lean product development?

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    string(1553) "This is another new frontier for lean thinking, not because lean efforts in engineering have only begun recently but because it wasn’t until the last few years that a systematic attempt to codify these techniques has been made. These techniques and ideas are loosely brought together under the concept of Lean Product and Process Development (LPPD).

At a time when innovation is the biggest factor behind the success or failure of an organization, finding ways to speed up the development of new products and to ensure these products correspond to actual customer needs is of the utmost importance.

At its core, Lean Product and Process Development aims to create the exact product that people want. And it is clear that developing better products reaching the market faster means profitability into the future. In general terms, lean product development achieves this by creating reusable knowledge that can be used in future iterations of a product and by deployment set-based concurrent engineering (which entails considering sets of designs at once to quickly eliminate inferior solutions, thus shortening development times). It is also useful to integrate the work of engineers with that of the manufacturing department, so that shop floor receives a well-researched, mistake-proof product that is ready for production without the need for extensive and expensive rework.

Interesting contamination exists here with improvement approaches like Lean Startup and Design for Manufacturing."
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FeaturesSep 2, 2019
The LGN LPPD Team
FEATURE – The authors discuss some of the most common problems that product development teams experience and what an effective assessment tool for engineering looks like.

What is 5S?

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FeaturesAug 22, 2019
Roberto Priolo
FEATURE – In this roundup, we look at one of the most important lean tools and how it is deployed in organizations by bringing together PL articles on the subject.

Understanding lean visual management tools

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FeaturesAug 20, 2019
Severino Abad
THE NAKED GEMBA – This useful article helps us to understand the different type of visual controls we can put in place, how they work and which ones to use to best convey our message.

A Norwegian lean epic

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Case studiesJul 18, 2019
Eivind Reke and Daryl Powell
CASE STUDY – Thousands of kaizens, a relentless focus on learning and the determination to continuously improve have made of this Norwegian company something of a lean fairytale.

Determination pays

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    string(1637) "While lean government and lean healthcare technically fall under this category, we consider lean service organizations to be those operating in areas like call centers, retail, hotels, restaurants, offices, banking, and so on. In such environments, there is a direct interaction with the customer, which should be seen as an opportunity to get real-time feedback on our service rather than a nuisance we have to deal with (if you have ever spoken with a customer care representative, you know what this means).

A common problem that practitioners trying to bring lean to services encounter is the difficulty to identify “the work” – whereas in manufacturing the product is in front of everyone’s eyes, in service organizations it is often hidden behind paperwork or a computer screen. Once the work is clearly visible, however, the opportunities for improvement are plentiful. To date, we have seen thousands of organizations striving to lean out the service they provide customers: from restaurants chains in the United States and China to a group of bakeries in Barcelona, from call centers to hotels, the application of lean services ideas can have an extraordinary impact on our economies. Especially if we consider that the service industry accounts for more than three-fifths of the global GDP and employs more than one-third of the global workforce.

Lean thinking is naturally a fit for the service industry, because of its focus on constantly delighting customers and on providing them with value-adding products."
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Case studiesJul 2, 2019
Richard van Ooijen and Riegholt Hilbrands
CASE STUDY – This Dutch company awards social benefits to the unemployed. Thanks to lean thinking, they were able to radically transform the service they offer them.

Reflecting on our lean healthcare journey

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    string(1608) "Lean thinking may have been born in Toyota in the 1950s and 1960s, but it wasn’t until after the year 2000 that a few hospitals began to explore its application to the healthcare industry (lean healthcare). These pioneering organizations came together to share their stories at the first Global Lean Healthcare Summit in the UK in 2007, which in turn triggered many more experiments around the world. Since then, interest has kept growing.

Some fifteen years on, we have hundreds of examples to learn from, from clinics and departments through to entire hospitals and even whole hospital systems. Not all early experiments succeeded, and we are still a long way from making lean a widely recognized way of working across the industry.
Healthcare providers around the world still face huge challenges, as ageing populations and unhealthy lifestyles boost the demand for healthcare faster than the growth of incomes and tax revenues from the middle classes. At the same time, the quality of care has not improved as much as the quality of other services in the economy, which is why more and more healthcare organizations are turning to lean.

Historically, lean healthcare ideas have been applied in large hospitals, but in the past few years we have started to see the philosophy adopted in earnest in many smaller organizations following a do-it-yourself approach that has generated many positive benefits. An impressive example is the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf near Barcelona."
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Case studiesJun 27, 2019
Grey Dube
CASE STUDY – The CEO of a hospital in Johannesburg looks back to the last five years to reflect on a lean healthcare transformation that is creating positive outcomes for patients.