Sustain using (PLANNING, AUDITS , LEADERSHIP)

Sustain using (PLANNING,  AUDITS , LEADERSHIP)

A good friend of mine recently sent me a photo of what his team found while cleaning one of their production areas:

Yes, that's a certificate lauding completion of various 5S activities… except the last one: sustain.  And from the mess in the background you can see what happened.

Sustaining improvement – lean or otherwise – is difficult.  How many of us are on a diet… again?  Needing to clean the garage… again?  In fact, sorting and straightening and all that is really the easy part.  Doing it day after day is tough.

Three sources of the difficulty come to mind.  The first is the lack of a plan to sustain the improvement.  How often will it be done?  How will it be monitored?  5S is often sustained through audits and daily checklists, even after it becomes ingrained in expectation and even culture.

But such plans are meaningless if there isn't also leadership commitment.  Are managers and supervisors holding themselves and others accountable to the sustaining plan?  What happens when the plan isn't followed?

However ultimately there won't be leadership commitment if there isn't a solid understanding of why the improvement program is happening in the first place.  I've seen innumerable organizations, including mine, go down the path of "we must do this or that program"… without understanding why.  I even know of one organization that I won't identify (cough… mine… cough) that once long ago had a goal to implement two lean tools per year.  We learned our lesson.  What is the problem or opportunity, what is the desired future state, and what is the best tool or program to achieve that future state?

To sustain an improvement program you need a solid plan.  For that plan to be effective you need leadership commitment.  For there to be leadership commitment there needs to be a solid reason and understanding of why the improvement is needed – and important – in the first place.  The power of Why.

Related posts:

1. Sustaining Lean: The Steering Committee
2. Sustaining Lean: Empowerment
3. Sustaining Lean: Effective Audits
4. Improving Leadership in Lean Business
5. The Leadership Problem

So why does 5S not sustain?

• Cultures that measure and put enormous pressure on the shop floor for labor efficiency and production volume - with no allowance or credit given for keeping things in order.
• 5S efforts that don't have any underlying purpose.  5S and all of the lean tools are improvement and problem solving devices.  What problem were you trying to solve by pursuing 5S?  People want and will readily use and sustain things that help them solve real problems.  More often than not the 5S effort didn't really help anyone solve any problem they really have.  More often than not, 5S is little more than monkey see-monkey do lean .... no real reason for doing it - just doing it because the lean book says 5S is good and someone said Toyota does it ... so we did it.
• How about an inherently unsustainable approach to 5S?  5S may well not have sustained because it just addressed the easy stuff - sweeping and sorting and yadda yadda yadda - but didn't cover all of the tough work that actually takes place in the work area ... maintaining the machine, changing it over, etc... or didn't really consider the quantities of material that flow in and out of the cell.
  
  Read more: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2012/07/take-another-path.html#ixzz225Zu64Da
  at Evolving Excellence 

 

From Management to Leadership

·        Articulate the values

o   Followers only follow when they sense an alignment between the organization's values and their own.

o   Commit these values to writing and seize every opportunity to reinforce them

·        Create a vision

o   To lead, you must have the "broad, far-reaching vision that takes into account the macro environment and anticipates where the organization should be in the future,"

o   To achieve this, leaders must strike a balance between being loyal to their values and having enough flexibility to modify their vision so that followers can have a stake in it and embrace It.

·        Build trust

o   For potential followers to trust you, they must believe what you say and see you take consistent action.

·        Provide Inspiration

o   People choose to follow those they find inspiring, who present a vision of a better world

·        Act courageously

o   The test of true leadership is "having the courage of one's convictions to act on it," says Tanaka.

·        Share the credit

o   When you get credit, spread the credit around the organization.

·        Establish empathy and listen

o   Leaders must regularly engage in dialogue with their followers and heed what they hear.

·        Be open

o   Be approachable and let your followers know you want their input, suggestions and ideas.

o   Empower your followers

o   "Letting go" is essential to leadership. Otherwise, you're leading an organization of one.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3U-oxo-ivrUQlEwdHU3VUlKdkE/edit