Continuous Improvement Blog

Change is on the Way!

Published May 30, 2014

Often times you can’t help but overhear conversations between your fellow classmates, and regularly the topics of interest revolve around two things–how tough our winters are, and how bad our dining halls are. This unfortunate perception held by some students has sparked a flurry of improvement events currently being held on campus. The one I would like to highlight is the Residential Dining Blueprint kaizen that was conducted this week.

The cries have been heard and the dining hall managers spent 12 long hours over the course of three days creating a blueprint for “what makes an awesome dining hall.” As a student playing the “customer” role on the kaizen team it was very refreshing to see just how much each and every manager is devoted to improving the residential dining experience. In creating the blueprint the team took advantage of a great organizational tool: the Fishbone diagram (click on the diagram to enlarge it).

The dining hall managers and staff definitely have their work cut out for them, but that isn’t going to stop them in their pursuit of creating the greatest possible dining experience. I look forward to seeing the improvements in the coming years.

Goodbye, Megan

Published May 23, 2014

By Ruth Archer

News

Today we bid a fond farewell to Megan Johnson. Megan has been a student Process Improvement Coordinator in the Office of Continuous Improvement for 3 years. In that time, she was involved with dozens of Kaizen Events, both as a coordinator and as a facilitator.

We have a Megan for that! The Two Megans partnership has come to an end.

Megan recently graduated from Michigan Tech with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. She’s taking a position with a global manufacturing company as a Value Stream Team Leader. A value stream is the series of events and the information flow required to transform a customer request into a good or service. Value streams generally cross production lines and departmental boundaries; they have an enterprise focus rather than a functional focus. Megan credits the skills she developed as a student Process Improvement Coordinator and as the president of the Leaders in Continuous Improvement (LCI) student organization with giving her the competitive edge during her job search.

Megan sends her thanks to all of the wonderful continuous improvement facilitators and team leaders that she’s worked with.

Goodbye, Megan. Have a super sparkly career!

Lean Best Practices are Everywhere… Once You Learn to See Them

Published May 14, 2014

By Megan Ross

We are pleased to present this guest blog by Rick Berkey, Research Engineer II and Product Development Manager, as well as a campus Lean Facilitator.

I recently purchased a lawn dethatcher online and was anxious to assemble it when I got home from work yesterday. When I opened the package, I was expecting the usual bag of parts and fasteners that fly everywhere when you rip open the industrial strength plastic packaging. If you’re like me, you also know instructions can be more like ‘suggestions’ — you look at bad illustrations, use your judgment, sort through parts that look close enough, skip important steps because you think you know the correct way, then take things apart once you realize you really don’t… and of course you end up with missing pieces or extra parts that you store as ‘just in case’ inventory. If only we had enough ‘junk drawers’ in our homes!

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find a great application of Lean (see image). All parts and fasteners are arranged on a ‘shadowboard’. Each panel was clearly labeled according to the sequential assembly steps provided in the instruction sheet. This simple yet effective solution highlights several Lean principles. First, it is centered around defining value in the eyes of the customer – i.e. making it easier for the person assembling it. Second, it embraces the 5S concept of establishing ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. Third, it serves as an effective visual control for the assembly process.

As the customer, I experienced several benefits and hence derived value as follows:

1. Knowing I had all the parts BEFORE I began…and if for some reason a part were missing, it would be obvious at the start

2. It was difficult NOT to follow instructions…the shadowboard keeps you on task. This can also be seen as an example of Poka-Yoke or mistake proofing

3. Faster assembly time, by reducing the following wastes: motion (looking for parts), defects (using wrong parts for a given step)

4. No missing/extra parts at the end…wow!

Kudos to Brinly-Hardy for getting it right with their product. The time and aggravation I saved was channeled into USING the product…after all, the goal was to dethatch my lawn, not assemble a dethatcher. Now, I know we’re not assembling dethatchers here on campus (well, maybe the Grounds department is!), but I would challenge all of us to see how these principles can and do apply to the things we do every day. Some questions to consider in your daily work: Who is your customer, and how to they define ‘value’? Is your work helping to create value or is it creating additional waste? Is there a visual solution that can streamline the process? When you develop and improve work processes, have you considered mistake proofing methods to make it easier to do it right the first time (by making it hard to do it incorrectly)?

Feel free to comment, and in the meantime I need to finish raking all that dead grass!

The shadowboard that helped error proof dethatcher assembly.

Summer is a Perfect Time for Improvements!

Published May 9, 2014

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Classes are over and the snow is melting, which can only mean one thing…Summer! The return of Summer means longer nights, vacations, and opportunities for improvements!

The Office of Continuous Improvement encourages you and your department to engage in small group discussion and talk about continuous improvement opportunities. It doesn’t take much; just a few minutes to exchange ideas and possible improvements for your area. There are plenty of lean facilitators on campus who are ready and willing to help. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an improvement event, please contact us at improvement-l@mtu.edu or call 906-487-3180.

Making Safety a Part of Your Lean Practice

Published May 2, 2014

By Megan Ross

Lean Thinking

Implementing safety and Lean together can help your organization increase productivity by reducing the wastes associated with a hazardous environment. Lean and other continuous improvement methodologies enable a safety-focused environment, by using problem solving and root cause analysis to correct the true cause of safety hazards in the workplace.

Here are some examples of how you can use Lean to make improvements to safety and increase safety awareness in your workplace:

Reducing excess inventory helps increase floor space and reduces potential tripping hazards. Other safety related to storage solutions might include avoiding piling boxes or other supplies on top of filing cabinets, shelves, etc.
While investigating workplace incidents, the “5 Whys” could be used to get down to the root causes of the accident and make improvements to prevent the error from occurring again. But remember, almost all system failures result from a combination of a number of factors and failures. You must continue to probe the circumstances, rules, policies, and people around the incident to search for all of the root causes.
Error-proofing can be used to avoid or prevent safety hazards.
Having “a place for everything and everything in its place” ensures that items are put back where they belong, and can be put back in a safe location.
When process mapping, safety risks can also be identified as improvement opportunities so that these risks can be mitigated.
Tracking metrics related to safety can help identify any trends that may exist regarding safety incidents in order to identify opportunities for improvement.
Standard work can be created for workplace safety procedures in order to ensure that the task is completed safely each time.
Safety topics, recent safety incidents, and safety metrics can all be discussed in daily team meetings to increase safety awareness.

Those are a few examples of how an organization can make safety a part of their Lean culture. Keep in mind, a successful safety culture requires the same management support and participation as successfully making Lean a part of your organization’s culture!

The Importance of Standards & Standardized Work

Published April 25, 2014

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Lean Thinking

Before implementing standards and visual controls

Standards are an important component in Lean environments. They can improve quality and reduce variability in products or services, keep quality consistent, make it easier to train new staff, allow for a respectful workplace for everyone involved, create a safer working environment, and are a basis for continuous improvement. With standards in place it is easy to point out problems or mistakes. For example, in the Memorial Union Building kitchen there is a shelf that contains a variety of different cooking oils, dressings, mixing bowls, and serving platters.

After implementing standards and visual controls

Before the MUB staff implemented standards the shelf was an unsightly problem. It was hard to find what you were looking for, there was no order for putting things away, and it was a potential hazard. Once they began to utilize standards and visual controls the supplies on the shelf are visible and each have a clearly defined space.

If you would like some help creating/implementing standards or standardized work don’t hesitate to contact us at improvement-l@mtu.edu or by calling 906-487-3180.

Collaboration with State of Michigan

Published April 18, 2014

By Ruth Archer

We are pleased to post this guest blog from Theresa Coleman-Kaiser, Assistant Vice President for Administration.

As a volunteer through the Michigan Lean Consortium (MLC), I was asked to work on an improvement project focused on revising the Michigan Department of Education’s (MDE) Scorecard to align more directly with the department’s articulated priorities. My role was that of a Lean facilitator.

The work of planning, data collection, meetings, and a final workshop was done virtually through email, conference calls, and by using Skype. This worked extremely well since I’m located in the U.P. and all the others in Lansing, MI. I initially worked with two representatives from the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget who coordinated and co-facilitated as “boots-on-the-ground” representatives responsible for the continued deployment of the Governor’s initiatives, and with key leadership in the Michigan Department of Education. The work concluded with two larger meetings that included the Deputy Superintendents and/or the Special Assistants from the various areas within the MDE.

The key deliverable was to create a pathway to get from the scorecard in place when we began this work in November, 2013, to a revised future-state scorecard that linked directly to the MDE mission and priorities that have been articulated for 2013-2015. At the conclusion of the final workshop, held in March 2014, the group had established a goal of two metrics for each of their seven strategic goals. Each scorecard metric would represent either a student outcome measurement, or measurement of a process that drove student outcomes. A few organizational metrics, such as employee turnover, were recognized as valuable although not directly tied to priorities.

While some follow-up work will need to be done to determine the final scorecard metrics and receive approval to execute the update, the group left the final workshop with a decision-making framework that will ensure the Scorecard metrics align with strategic priorities, is outward-facing whenever possible to inform the public, drives the desired behavior, and is appropriate at the departmental level.

This work will significantly change the metrics that appear on the MDE scorecard as well as significantly reduce the total number of department-level metrics from the current 27 to between 15 and 20. Many of the existing Scorecard metrics will either be pushed to an Office-level scorecard or eliminated entirely.

Facilitating this improvement work was a great professional development experience for me that provided an opportunity to exercise my facilitation skills and sharpen my thinking on metrics. I had a really fun group of people to work with and greatly enjoyed this volunteer experience.

The MLC partners with the State of Michigan to provide assistance in implementing the Good Government imitative, which is about achieving best-in-class public service through empowered and innovative employees. Elements of good government are service and process optimization, employee engagement, change management, and performance management.

Process Mapping Workshop

Published April 11, 2014

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The Office of Continuous Improvement has begun a Lean Workshop series on campus. Thus far in the series we’ve held a 5S workshop, and another one is ready for you to sign up. The Office and the Lean Facilitators are working hard to plan regularly scheduled workshops throughout the year.

The next event in the series will be on Process Mapping. Process Mapping is a way to define the purpose of a process, who is responsible for each step, to what standard a business process should be completed, and how success can be determined. The workshop will take about 6 hours total on June 10th and June 12th. You can choose blocks of time that are convenient for you. For more information you can visit the Process Mapping Workshop page. Sign-up closes on Friday, May 23rd., because the facilitators need time to plan.

New Manager of Process Improvement

Published April 4, 2014

By Ruth Archer

Ruth Archer, Manager of Process Improvement

Hello! I’m Ruth Archer, the new Manager of Process Improvement. I’ll be maintaining and building on the excellent foundation of continuous improvement using Lean principles already established at Michigan Tech. I’m responsible for the leadership and support of process improvement activities on campus. I’m pleased to be leading this highly skilled team and look forward to taking on the challenges of the position.

I believe that following a continuous improvement philosophy is an excellent way to be successful, both professionally and personally. Integrating continuous improvement into your work can increase your effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. Bottlenecks and non-value-added steps can be identified and eliminated. Costs can be reduced through savings in money, time, and materials. In addition, continuous improvement can increase your job satisfaction because you’ll feel empowered. Decision making is pushed down to the lowest possible level. Employees are enabled to challenge the status quo and offer ideas for improvements. And the system ensures that people’s ideas are listened to and discussed, so, even if your idea isn’t ultimately used, you’ll still feel valued. Finally, continuous improvement increases customer satisfaction because the customer gets a quality product at the lowest cost. Satisfied customers will return for more and recommend your organization to other people.

The best part is that you don’t have to figure this out on your own! Our team of experienced facilitators and process coordinators will help you form the right team and lead you through every step to get your process improved.

I personally enjoy practicing Lean principles. When I was an aircraft technician in the Air Force, my shop lived by the 5S’s: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. Our tools were carefully arranged, including our bench tools and our toolboxes. Our workplace was cleaned at the end of each shift, and our work on the aircraft had to be meticulous. We used technical orders to standardize tasks and regular inspections to sustain adherence to procedures. As a university instructor, I used continuous improvement as an integral part of teaching. I applied the Lean principles of creating value for the customer, eliminating waste, and respect for people to improve my courses. For example, reviewing the type and spacing of assignments to provide a steady work load for students, explicitly relating assignments to learning outcomes, and ensuring all assignments have a clear format and grading rubric are all continuous improvement processes for faculty.

Contact us and we’ll come and talk to you about how you can incorporate continuous improvement practices into your everyday activities.

Auxiliary Services Customer Appreciation Fair

Published March 28, 2014

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On Tuesday, March 11th, the Office of Continuous Improvement participated in the Customer Appreciation Fair held by Auxiliary Services in the MUB Ballroom. This event was held as a small token of thanks to all of Auxiliary Services’ customers for their patronage this past year. There were lots of fun games, good prizes, and great food. It was a great opportunity to get out of the office for a few hours and enjoy an afternoon of fun!

Our booth at the Customer Appreciation Fair

At the OCI booth, we decided to incorporate lean tools and lean thinking into our game: Standardized Work LEGO Man Building. One participant was given verbal instructions on how to build the LEGO man while the other was given written and visual instructions. Every time, the participant who was given the written and visual instructions finished building first. This was a fun exercise to show how beneficial standardized work and standardized job element sheets are in making processes more efficient.