How to Get Started with Lean
Most of you will have have incorporated some aspect of lean into your business, projects or at home. Let’s look at some alternatives for getting started with the implementation of lean principles, practices, methods and tools.
Some of you like Murray Guy will have experienced extreme over budget issues and have been forced to collaborate to fix a broken budget to save a project. This form of lean can be very stressful, which is WHY it is much better to start a project with Lean Project Delivery.
Another option is to engage with your staff learning the eight wastes and committing to eliminating waste each and every day. This is the approach that Paul Acres adopted at Fast Cap helped top make lean simple and easy to do. There are some good videos on U-tube as well as this book written about the “2 second Lean” approach.
One of the more common ways for a project to get started with Lean would be to implement 5S on the jobsite. By Sorting, Straightening, Shining and Standardizing the work place, the team will benefit from better safety and higher productivity.
A clean organized work place site is a more productive site and it will be much safer. This type of process improvement will also lead to the realization that the project will need to implement a Just-In-Time material handling, as who wants to have excess inventory hanging around.
For people wanting to network, create community and learn from organization that have an interest in Lean, you might want to host a Lean Coffee Event This is the approach we used in Saskatoon to get our Community of Practice going. At our Lean Coffee events we have organized some excellent tours of POS Biosciences and Superior Cabinets. If I had to pick one of these options, I would likely advise you to go on Tour of a Lean Company as this can be an eye opener as to a whole different way of approaching work. It can also be very motivational for enacting change.
Good luck on your Lean Journey!
Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green
mguy@i-designs.ca
