by Lee Fried, on 19 Feb 2007 01:30 pm
The Journey
Quote of the Week
After a much needed vacation snowboarding the deep powder of British Columbia I am back and energized to get started where I left off. Thanks Ted for holding down the fort while I was gone!
The week prior to me leaving for vacation was exciting and fruitful. During this week we had a very large Kaizen rapid process improvement workshop (RPIW) take place in the Model Line. You might recall my entry on February fourth where I introduced this event. Well, as expected the kaizen team did not let me down and the event was a huge success. Over the last couple of years I have participated in many RPIW’s but none as anticipated as this one. During the week we were able to achieve or exceed all of the expected deliverables. It its amazing how smart and creative people are when given the opportunity. Most importantly, we were able to relax much of the stress that has risen among staff and managers about the impact Lean will have on them.
For this reason I thought I would quote one of the managers that participated in this RPIW. This manager is highly talented and a real pleasure to work with, but has had a hard time over the last couple of months understanding how the changes we were planning would make a difference. She was very nervous going into the event. On the last day of the RPIW I checked in with the manager to see how they were doing. She had a huge smile on her face and remarked:
“This was the most fun I have ever had at work. I really get it now! I have been trying to make these changes for years and we got them all done in a single week. I want this to be my new full time job.” I smiled and told her it already was.