DailyKaizen

This last Friday I got a chance to return to the Model Line and conduct some process walks with the senior leadership team as part of the executive training program I have discussed in several posts.  The focus of the process walk was to teach the leadership team the basics of what, why and how of visual control systems.  For me, it was a fun opportunity to see how far the Model Line has progressed since my last visit a couple of months back.  More specifically, I was interested in seeing the leadership standard work processes that are being put in place in support of the Daily Accountability system. 

Overall, I was really impressed.  Over the last couple of months a three tiered accountability system has been put in place that links the front line teams to the Value Stream owners to the Vice President over the entire operation.  Each tier has it own visual control system that details the standard work of the team/person, the plan vs. actual, the improvement work underway and the checking schedule for the managers. 

We started the walk at the production team level in our customers service department where each team has a detailed production board in place.   This is called a tier one area for our accountability system. The board shows production targets vs. actual on an hourly basis as well as the reasons why each target were missed.  The board also has an improvement suggestion area as well as a detailed list of improvements under way.  On the backside of the board is a checking schedule and standard work for the front line supervisors which shows their hourly standard work. 

During our next stop we visited the Value Stream leaders improvement board, which is a tier two area.  The board is similar to the production team, but instead of showing the plan vs. actual hour by hour it instead day by day.  This board includes a section for root cause analysis as well as countermeasures in process across teams.  On the back side of the board is a checking schedule for the Director including standard work for the day.

Finally, in the afternoon I got a chance to visit the VP’s visual control, which is a tier three area.  The board links very nicely with the tier two board and shows plan vs. actual across all of the functions on a weekly basis.  This board also has a checking schedule as well as standard work for the VP.  In addition, the board has a set of A3’s identifying strategic improvement work underway across the value stream.

It was really impressive to see how much more disciplined the management system had become.  It was equally as impressive to see how the visual control systems linked the layers of the organization and how they support the reduction in variation in both work processes and management processes.  Each of the boards had clearly been PDCA’ed dozens of times to reflect improved thinking and demonstrated the evolution of the improvement of the management system.   I wonder what will change in the next couple of months?

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed