Daily Team Meetings Archives | Continuous Improvement Blog

Wedding Bells Are No Exception

Published June 7, 2018

Lean Thinking

So often we get caught up in our projects: we start them, prioritize them, and then devote all of our attention to them one by one until they’re completed. We very rarely have a single project that is on-going for a long period of time; why is this?

I think it’s because we don’t want lingering work, we thrive off of completion. From that we gain satisfaction and pride in our work.

There is, however, a trade-off for this pride. That is, when we continuously move from one project to the next, seeing each to completion before starting the next, most of us quickly become burned out. When we get burned out we lose our energy and our enthusiasm, as well as become negative, frustrated, and unproductive. That satisfaction we were chasing before no longer sustains us.

Back in February, one of my co-worker’s blogged on incremental improvement, and recently she blogged about Preemptive Improvement. In these blogs, she’s shared how our office has been using small improvements to achieve a high future state and strive for perfection, even when a correction isn’t necessary. These methods are some that I’ve been applying in my own personal life heavily in the last year or so.

Last July I got engaged, we set a date 11 months out and so commenced the wedding planning. For all those who’ve been married, you probably know the magnitude of this task. I’ve always been a “planner,” per say, and I tend to enjoy getting to use my creativity, so from the beginning I’ve been pretty excited about the planning process. However, I know a lot of people who’ve gotten married and I’ve learned that the entire process isn’t always fun, or creative. I also know myself and I tend to go and go and go, and focus on one thing until it’s complete before I’ll start the next; meaning, I tend to burn myself out.

Knowing the planning wouldn’t always play on my interests, and knowing that I sometimes overburden myself were good things to be aware of back in July. Because of this, I was able to plan ahead and use my lean thinking skills to combat potential burnouts or becoming a bridezilla (my worst nightmare). I did this by utilizing the skills I’ve learned here in the Office of Continuous Improvement. I can honestly, say with 10 days left until the wedding, that I’ve only had two “burnouts,” one as a result of over-processing, and the other was out of my control to change.

After talking to multiple soon-to-be wives, I’ve learned that I am the one who’s been the least bit stressed about the planning process as a whole and I believe this is from all of the lean I’ve implemented… From organizing my thoughts via a gigantic affinity diagram, laying out the roles and responsibilities of our family members in a swim lane, using a decision matrix to decide on venues and vendors, ICE prioritization of tasks, plentiful checklists, recognizing when I was over processing, and also taking it one step at a time and remembering that the entire wedding doesn’t need to be planned over-night.

I’ve also gathered that on average, the last three weeks before the wedding tend to be the busiest with wrapping up small details. However, because of the prioritization that we conducted early on, and the small deadlines we set, we were able to spend two of those weeks towards something not related to wedding, and only spend the last week wrapping up details.

34643065_10204681238907051_8619962606741880832_n (1) — This is the original affinity diagram that kicked off the planning (kind of) last August. Things would get added and removed as we moved, but at one point it took up this entire 10 ft wall.

The purpose of today’s blog post is to show you that as long as you learn how to slow down your thinking, anyone can implement and benefit from small improvements striving for perfection.

Regular Leadership Huddles Produce Insightful Reflections

Published June 11, 2015

By Ruth Archer

We are pleased to post this guest blog from Theresa Coleman-Kaiser, Associate Vice President for Administration at Michigan Tech.

Auxiliary Services at Michigan Tech has a practice of a weekly leadership huddle that takes place for 30 minutes each Tuesday, using the virtual platform of Google Hangouts. This use of technology saves travel time for the 10 participants (who are located all over campus and more than 5 miles apart), allowing them to tune in from their offices and share their desktops when referring to metrics.

The meeting follows a standard agenda of each manager reviewing immediate concerns or hot topics, key schedules, an accountability review of leading indicators and a short report-out on continuous improvement events and projects for their area. The meeting is kicked off by a safety topic and a lean focus, and responsibility for reporting on these topics is rotated among the leadership team members. Recently as his lean focus, Mike Patterson, Associate Director of Dining Services, shared reflections on a Residential Dining Blueprint kaizen event in which the dining leadership team reviewed the improvement strategy they had develop last year, measured progress-to-goal, and set new priorities.

Mike reflected that while this review was at the strategic level and involved primarily management, the kaizen identified a number of “spin off” kaizen events in which involving those hourly and student employees closest to the work would be critical. As part of this reflection, Mike referenced a blog post by Brynn Neilson that focuses on pulling improvement ideas from staff and understanding your business by focusing on what the customer values. The blog lists 30 simple guidelines to ask ourselves and our employees that can help us improve in the areas of customer wants. Customer wants fall into four general categories of VALUE, FASTER, EASIER, and BETTER. This practice leverages what Neilson shares is supported by statistics, which is that “53% of great ideas come from staff on the shop floor.”

After Mike referenced this blog post, I read it and would now definitely recommend it to those interested in building an improvement culture focused on customer-defined value and respecting those closest to the work. The list of 30 guidelines for triggering improvement ideas is worth printing off and keeping handy for future reference.

References

Neilson, Brynn. (2012, July 16). Continuous improvement – 53% of great ideas come from staff. Spinning Planet [web log]. Retrieved from: http://www.spinningplanet.co.nz/about/blog?view=46

Lean IT at Michigan Tech

Published May 28, 2015

By Ruth Archer

This post was originally published in Michigan Tech’s IT News and Announcements blog.

Lean principles are generally well established and have been applied to manufacturing for quite some time. The idea is simple: identify and eliminate areas of waste that lead to poor service for customers. Within Michigan Tech IT, we’ve begun to apply those principles to our work. Though the changes are small, they’ve made a large impact in how we do daily business, and they’re sparking a cultural change within our organization.

Group-ups

The Services Team is using daily Group-up meetings to increase awareness among staff and solve problems. “Our morning huddle brings everyone together for 15 minutes to discuss what is most important, most time-sensitive, and most technically problematic,” says David Kent, IT Services Director. One of the main objectives of the meetings is to help each other solve problems or help with time-sensitive commitments. “Threats to projects and deadlines are identified quickly, and often resolved on the spot, because the entire team is present,” says Kent.

The morning huddle fosters a more efficient and open, collaborative attitude within the team. “Since we’ve started having the group-ups, our ticket count has decreased significantly, and we’re continuing to set record lows on a regular basis. Everything that is important to our group is on the whiteboard for all to see, and each member is able to make updates as needed. We definitely accomplish more with less because we focus on what is on the board.”

Project Board (Cadence Board)

For the past month, the Enterprise Application Services group has been using a Cadence Board for their Web Focus Project. The low-tech and flexible visualization tool gives visibility to the current workflow and progress and informs the team of each other’s work progress. The board displays planned work, unplanned work, high level milestones, a parking lot (for future items) and a rolling two-week work plan. The team meets three times a week for status updates and discussion.

“The board helps us keep the project moving and more easily keep track of its different elements,” says Emmett Golde, EAS Director. “It’s increased communication between team members, and because it’s so visual, you can immediately see who’s doing what and where they’re at in a particular process. Tasks are shown in small enough pieces so that we can see where the workload is distributed. It shows us if a particular team member is overloaded.”

Process Mapping for a Kaizen Event

When Ashley Sudderth, Chief Information Compliance Officer, met with the Office of Continuous Improvement on March 23, it was to discuss IT’s Procurement and Deployment process for new machines. “It was an area that generated a lot of help desk tickets and was one we knew needed improvement,” said Ashley. “We met with the Office and completed a process map of the P&D process. They helped us examine the process for where we could benefit from a Kaizen event… and we chose the service desk workflow for task management.”

Through the mapping process other small changes were identified that had a big impact in addition to the Kaizen event. “It’s been very helpful to have outside input from actual customers who also understand the Lean Process,” said Angie Hebert, Sr. Help Desk Consultant, a member of the process mapping team. “One of the things customers were unsure of was what software would be included on their machines at delivery. We took that feedback and set up a web page that gives them a full list of what software they will receive as a standard installation. It was just one of the things that we might not have considered had we not gone through this process.”

One of the deliverables: a new computer checklist which now accompanies each new deployment. — One of the deliverables produced as a result of process mapping: a computer checklist which now accompanies each new deployment.

Though the team is still in the process mapping stage, they’ve already seen major benefits. “Our team members have an increased knowledge of the parts and pieces in the deployment process from procurement to the actual builds,” says Hebert. “We’ve seen more care and diligence in work, resulting in faster, better builds in deployment.”

Josh Olson, Chief Technology Officer, is embracing the shift to Lean IT. “As an organization, we want to be open to change in our processes and methods and commit to continuous and ongoing improvement,” he says. “Since we’ve started incorporating Lean thinking into our daily work, we’ve seen measurable improvement. The culture is changing. We’re changing. Lean IT is improving the way we provide services to our customers.”

Lean Thinking in an Office

Published February 23, 2015

By Ruth Archer

A warm welcome to our new guest blogger, Jim Desrochers. Jim is the Associate Director for Employer Relations in Michigan Tech’s Career Services. He is also training to become a campus Lean Facilitator.

In a manufacturing setting, waste is measured in terms of factory efficiency and scored by the accounting measurement system as part of the financial reporting process. In an office setting, these measurements are harder to define but they “show up” in wasted effort, frustration, frayed nerves, and people staying late to help make the event a success.

Our Career Services group is known for coordinating our bi-annual Career Fairs. Managing logistics for hundreds of companies, nearly a thousand recruiters, and several thousand students leaves very little room for error. Most importantly, the future careers of our students are on the line. With the economy improving and the excellent reputation of Michigan Tech students, the size and expectations for Career Services events have continued to grow.

As our department’s first step in our lean journey, we decided to start a morning huddle. Initially, the primary focus of the meeting was our event-planning calendar. This grid is a look ahead for the next few weeks to ensure everyone in the department knows what is coming next. To make this happen, we repurposed a dry erase board and moved it to a central area. A few dry-erase markers later, we had the beginnings of a communication structure!

In an office where everyone is extremely busy, we had reservations about everyone sacrificing 10 minutes of their day. We also were concerned that we would not know what to talk about! These concerns turned out to be unfounded! After a month of using this new process, the information on the dry erase board has changed. Some things we initially placed on the board aren’t used anymore and we simply erased them. New items are added as we develop new educational programming. Using only markers and bad penmanship, the board continues to be dynamic. We are starting to use rulers and magnets to make the look neater – but we don’t want to lose the flexibility of just getting the information communicated.

Our implementation of Lean Initiatives in our offices continues as time allows. As we continue to add process improvements, these items will find their way back to the central huddle board. It will be interesting to see what the board looks like a year from now!

Menlo Innovations’ Business Value of Joy Workshop

Published November 24, 2014

By Ruth Archer

Guest Post

Thank you to our returning guest blogger, Kaylee Betzinger, a former student process improvement coordinator here at Michigan Tech and currently an intern at Amway in their Enterprise Excellence Department.

I recently had the opportunity to go on an industry tour to Menlo Innovations. Menlo Innovations is a custom software development company that utilizes a High-Tech Anthropology approach and incorporates continuous improvement principles in their day-to-day activities to develop and build new and innovative programs for their customers. Richard Sheridan, Menlo’s founder and CEO, is the author of Joy Inc. (How We Built a Workplace People Love). Menlo has won numerous awards, including Inc.’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in American (Inc. Magazine), 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For (Metro Detroit), and the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Excellence in Workplace Flexibility (When Work Works).

A hot topic lately at Amway has been Visual Management. Several different departments at Amway Headquarters have expressed interest in Visual Management, so we (Enterprise Excellence) thought, what better way to teach Visual Management than to go to a world renowned company that is known for their culture and visual workspace (AKA, go to the Menlo Innovation Gemba). Menlo welcomes companies to come in and take one of the many tours or workshops available and learn more about what it means to have Joy in the workplace. We were able to take the Menlo Innovations Business Value of Joy Workshop, which is a private workshop geared toward a topic of our choosing (Visual Management) and is given by one of the partners.

James Goebel, Menlo’s Chief Architect and a Partner was our workshop facilitator. Before our tour even began we were able to participate in their companywide daily standup meeting. Their daily stand up (see Figure 1) takes place every morning at 10:00 am. Everyone gets up from what they are doing, forms a large circle, and explains what they will be working o Menlo Figure 2 Open Workspace n for the day and if they are in need of any assistance from other team members. I was astounded that everyone was able to participate (60+ employees) and keep it under 10 minutes. What a great way to kick-off our workshop!

After the stand-up, James began talking about the Menlo culture and the
different behaviors they’ve incorporated, such as an open and collaborative workspace (no walls, cubicles, or designated stations/desks, see Figure 2), estimation without fear, and making mistakes faster. Making mistakes faster is (what I believe) a key in any continuous improvement culture, so I inquired further and James explained that you have to create an environment where problems are obvious. When the problems are obvious and visual, you can fix them and generate results much quicker. A perfect example of this is in their Weekly Project Tracking Board (see Figure 3). For each day of the week they’ve laid out exactly what each project pair will be working on, on what they call a story card. The story cards are a simple, hand written description of what is needed for this piece of the project, an estimation of how long this will take, and a status in the form of a colored dot. They have 5 different colors with a different meaning for each (as seen in the upper right hand corner of each story card). The colors and meanings are as follows: yellow—currently in process, orange—done in the eyes of the team and waiting for QA approval, red—needs additional attention, question/need assistance, or waiting for a response from the client, green—completed, and blue—cancelled. This project tracker is an extremely simple and effective way to track projects. Anyone in the building can walk over to the board and see the progress on any given project.

Anywhere you look in the building you can see how Menlo has integrated visual management and visual cues. You can feel the Joy in the air when you walk in, and that is something to be cherished and striven for. I would recommend taking a Menlo tour to anyone interested in learning more about a continuous improvement culture and what it looks like to have Joy in the workplace (plus you get a copy of Rich Sheridan’s Joy Inc.).

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!

Tag: Daily Team Meetings

Wedding Bells Are No Exception

Regular Leadership Huddles Produce Insightful Reflections

Lean IT at Michigan Tech

Group-ups

Project Board (Cadence Board)

Process Mapping for a Kaizen Event

Lean Thinking in an Office

Menlo Innovations’ Business Value of Joy Workshop

Sponsored Programs Kanban

Making Safety a Part of Your Lean Practice