Project Kaizen Is Team Sport

I started working with teams on improving operations in 1985. For 10 years we called this group work SGIAs, small group improvement activities. It was very Deming-like. We would use the seven QC (problem-solving) tools¹ to tackle an issue the group had in the production setting. At that time I struggled to get plant management to let people off the line fearing the loss of productivity. Another ten years later, things have changed on the factory floor. Now, the common sense in production is to help people closest to the work contribute to ongoing improvement.

Make project kaizen team sport.

We have 20 years of ground to cover to bring kaizen to project workgroups and not much time to do it. The approach we used 20 years ago will work just fine today in the project setting.

Norman Bodek is writing about CEDAC. This is a wonderful approach to engage people on a team who might not be able to get to a meeting because they are doing their "other job" or fulfilling their promise to the team. The CEDAC approach allows people to continue working on solving a problem while including people that just happen by. Make sure you read Norman's posting.

Here's another best practice for workgroups who practice kaizen. Make project kaizen team sport. That's right, if there are 8 of you in the group, set out to have everyone contribute a kaizen proposal each month that is adopted. Some people think they are not creative. What they don't know is they are wrong! Most of us just need a little encouragement and support. Make it a point of taking time each week to have a conversation about each others' ideas for improving group performance. Less than once/week won't do it. You need to keep your attention on improving the performance of the group to produce more value for the customer, the company, and yourselves. Track your performance. In no time, I predict, your team of 8 will be delivering 25 or more adopted improvements/week. Why am I so sure? I've seen workgroups do more!

Gang-of-Seven

• Bill Waddell
• Chuck Frey
• Hal Macomber
• Joe Ely
• Jon Miller
• Mark Graban
• Norman Bodek

1. Cause-and-effect diagram, Pareto chart, checksheet, histogram, scatter diagram, control chart, and various graphs [ ⇑ back ]

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