DailyKaizen

As a consultant I have noticed in every area that I work there seems to be a tendency for teams to be paralyzed by what they cannot easily control. It is far easier to identify other’s wastes, variation, defects and poor practice then it is to see our own. Recently I spent some time with a manager that made a comment that improvement was out of her control and the only “real opportunity” was to fix others upstream. This was also the case six months ago when I first began working in the Model Line area. At that time there was a belief that the only way to make breakthrough improvement was to work upstream to fix the inputs. The leadership saw an opportunity to make small improvements internally, but were easily distracted by systemic problems that we hard to describe and even more difficult to develop countermeasures for. What is remarkable is how much good work can get done when this attitude changes. The leadership team has begun to look critically at their own processes and they have been taught how to see value flow. While the opportunity to work upstream is still powerful it is no longer the priority. Instead, the team is intensely focused on putting there own house in order. Before asking others to fix their processes the team believes they must fix “their house first.” In other words, flush the waste out of your system and then work up stream with your suppliers to do the same. The more visible and reliable your processes become the more evident it becomes that others need to make improvement.

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