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We've all heard about kaizen. It's a practice for individuals, teams, and across process. People seem to take to it quite well in the factory and process environments. That's not the case in the project setting. At the TWI Summit, I was introduced to the Job Methods (JM) improvement approach. JM teaches how to see waste. JI in combination with JM teaches people the skills of improving.

"Do what you can teach. It's easy to teach JM."

Both JI and JM start with a Job Breakdown Sheet (JBS). Think of that as a full description of the steps for performing standard work. JI uses that standard work as the basis for understanding what must be taught. JM uses the JBS as the beginning for doing a systematic review for improving the work. Without going into a full explanation — JM is taught in 10 hours — the approach leads the person setting out to improve through a process of considering the various sources of waste. When I was introduced to JM the process was improved by reducing the total time by over 60%. The resulting process had a higher quality, was less complex, and was easier to teach.

I understand that Toyota uses a somewhat different approach based on PDCA and Ohno's and Shingo's view of pull and flow. My sense from the introduction is JM is easier to learn and follow. And, I can imagine that the Toyota approach might produce better results. I can also imagine the Six Sigma Black Belts saying that DMAIC produces better results. But better is what you do once you are doing something. Start with JM, then go to DMAIC or kaizen workshops. The practical side of me says, "Do what you can teach. It's easy to teach JM." You can read about JM in the The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors, by Patrick Graupp and Bob Wrona.