Let us look at a math example of what we just said.

X = (1/0) + 12 – 3

X = Undefined + 9

Undefined + 9 does not equal anything in reality, so we will never know what the answer can or could be, there are in fact an infinite number of answers, because 1/0=∞ (∞ is the infinity symbol). Infinity is an undefined number for which there will never be an answer, thus we will never be able to get an answer.

Why is it Important in Lean Thinking and Life?

In Lean Thinking and in Life if we operate under the assumption of simple addition and subtraction equations, we can and often do come to the false conclusion that a zero or negative in one area can be compensated for by doing better in another. However when we operate under the true assumption that many of our equations involve either division or at least one variable involves a division factor, we can no longer tolerate zero factors, and we realize a negative can have devastating consequences (they can turn what should be a success into a huge loss).

Additionally in Lean and Life we should understand that certain variables will always range in value between 0 and 1, they are always limiting factors to the equation and thus should be look at as if they are a percentage. In fact if certain of these are manipulated into being above one, we know that one of two things is occurring, one that we are being intentionally mislead, or two that we are forcing some part of a system to work beyond it true capability.

When situation one occurs, it shows that we have serious problems within the organization. The organization lacks in respect, honesty, integrity, trust, and fidelity such organizations will often experience roller coaster cycles as dishonesty can make it look highly successfully, till the truth catches up with it and it becomes a dirty dog.

In situation two we know that forcing a system to perform beyond its natural capacity, will in the end either shorten its life span, or drive its cost factors higher. Over performance is not a maintainable state something will give in the end, we need to look at a business like a horse you can run it to death in less than a day, or you can use it and look after it properly and ride it for years.

Life Equation and Variables that Affect Lean Thinking and Results

Performance = (Respect x Mastery x Opportunity) / Compensation

Respect = (Respected Person’s Attitude + Their Relationship with the Other Person)/The Other Person’s Attitude

The Other Person’s Attitude = (How They Have Been Treated by the Respected Person – The Other Person’s Societies View of Fair Treatment) / The Other Person’s Societies View of Fair Treatment

Mastery = (Wisdom + Ability) / Desire

Wisdom = Knowledge x Experience

Ability = Skill x Practise

Desire = ((Need + Want) x Reward) / Attitude

Opportunity = (Societies Needs and Wants / Capability to Produce) x Available Resources x Society’s Perception of Producer

Society’s Perception of Producer = How They Treat are Seen as Treating Consumers x How They are Seen as Treating Employees x How They are Seen as treating Suppliers and Customers x Their Proximity to Consumers x How Essential Their Products Are

Capability to Produce = Sum of the Abilities of People x Technology Available

Compensation = (Wealth Exchanged for Service x Treatment for Service Rendered) / (Average Society Wealth x Average Society Treatment)

Value to Consumer = Relative Cost Factor x Relative Quality Factor x Societies Needs and Wants x Society’s Perception of the Producer

Relative Cost Factor = Producer Price / Lowest Cost Producer Price

Relative Quality Factor = Producer Quality / Highest Available Quality

These are just a small sampling of Life Equations that affect us every day. If Lean Thought is to succeed and help improve both our organizational success and ultimately our whole society, we need to stop thinking in excessively simple patterns that really do not exist. Doing so is what has lead to all of Lean Thinking’s failures to date. Organizations make the false assumption that they can tackle only certain issues and sustain their gains. But when they do this they often end up in a worse situation than they started out in. Lean is like life everything is woven together to form a tapestry that can either be a thing of beauty or an ugly piece of garbage.

Creating and sustaining Lean takes constant effort to fix all problems, not just the highly visible ones. Every part is important from cultural change, relationship development, and open honest communication to employee empower, process improvement, and quality at the source. Leave out any part and instead of gaining a sustainable change, you end up with an ugly mess.

A recent equation we saw on line highlights this:

Purpose + Mastery = Motivation + Autonomy = Engagement

A better one would be:

Purpose x Mastery x Motivation x Autonomy = Engagement

Why is that?

Purpose is the reason behind everything without it nothing will ever happen zero Purpose results in zero Engagement. Likewise with no mastery any engagement is useless. Additionally we see hundreds of examples in history when there was abundant Purpose and Mastery around, but nothing occurred thus they do not equal Motivation and Autonomy, or Engagement. Engagement requires all four factors to work together because motivation which is desire and even have autonomy will never create engagement without purpose and mastery (ability), without a reason no one does anything, and even if they want to do something they require the ability. Thus if any of these four factors is very low you end up with very poor results, and if one is zero than you get nothing. If we take the time to consider these issues we will see that many assumed equations are similar, and instead of being summed totals are in fact functional equations involving multiplication and/or division, which means zeros and low number have bad effects.

Reality television has brought us many new shows and channels. Some of the best of these are come in the culinary field. One such show that truly highlights the benefits of Lean features British Chef Gordon Ramsay. The show is Kitchen Nightmares by the Fox network, and the British version was Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares by the BBC. In both series you see Ramsay work to try and save a struggling restaurant from closure.

As you watch the shows, you see how Ramsay works to improve process flow, reduce inventory, eliminate defects and rework, and build quality into the product. To do that he uses his understanding of what the customer truly wants and needs, so that he can deliver to them a product and experience that they will consider of value.

He may never use many of our words such as 5S, or Value Stream Mapping, yet what he is doing on the show is applying Lean in a totally practical way.

His shows are worth watching for more info search Google in your area, and here is a link to Fox’s Website just click the picture.

Link to Show Webiste

Is there ever a time when we should resort to quick fixes? The simple answer is no!!! Let us start by looking at the benefits and problems quick fixes cause.

The only benefit to quick fix solutions is a short term temporary solution to a current symptom of a problem.

The disadvantages are on the other hand many.

1. They breed a culture of laziness, since the symptom goes away so does the pressing need to actually solve the problem.

2. They hide the real problems, once the symptom is gone from sight it gets harder to look for the real problem, and it makes it to easy to ignore the real problems.

3. They delay real improvements that would actually solve the problem, no pressing need people and resources go else where.

4. They end up crippling the organization that uses them, instead of building the ability to actually solve problems you end up building an organization full of bandaid patchers, as long as they can hide a problem the better.

5. You create needless controls and functions, as most quick fixes involve creating some new rule to solve the symptom, the usual result is that for every problem you create a few dozen quick fixes to cover each of its symptoms. In the end you aalways find that the quick fix artists spent more time putting bandaids on symptoms than it would have taken to actually fix the real problem in the first place.

6. Quick fixes allow problems to fester to the point they can kill an organization, even if they do not because the problem is hidden it actual is allowed to get worse, so even if it is eventually treated, the treatment required becomes far more complicated and expensive. Additionally you end up having to go back and waste time cleaning up all the bandaids you have used to hide it.

7. They are just another form of waste, used to hide the real waste in an organization.

As you can see we are not real fans of using quick fixes. Here we would like to point out that taking a temporary action to get a process restarted, while you are working to find and solve the root cause is not a quick fix, they are in fact exactly what they are a temporary work around like a road construction detour that is used till the real problem is identified and a solutions is being implemented. True quick fixes are simply bandaids used to solve the  symptom of the problem, no one ever looks for the real underlying problem.

No one would appreciate a doctor that simply gives you a pill to treat a symptom, and never does anything to find the disease that is causing the symptom, that is exactly what a quick fix is. A doctor like that would eventually end up in trouble, and many of their patients would end up dead. Managers, engineers, and other organization senior  staff, that resort to quick fixes, are doing the same thing. Instead they should take action to reduce the symptoms effects, while taking action to solve the underlying problem, just like a doctor will give you something for a fever, but will determine the underlying cause and treat it as well.

Quick fixes carry with them a huge downside many ignore, they breed laziness and complacency in an organization, because they mask and hide underlying problems and remove the need to actually deal with them. Organization that rely on quick fixes end up crippled and unable to actually develop the ability to ever solve their problems. Just take a good look at how most governments are run.

Avoiding them will build your organization problem solving muscle, and ability. You will also gain, because every quick fix requires needless new controls, many of which would have never been needed, if the problem would have been solved in the first place. Get rid of these later will waste more time than it would have taken to fix the root cause in the first place.

Recently I have been seeing more and more discussion about Lean Maturity and people asking us how they know they are Lean. Well I honestly feel that there is really no such thing as Lean Maturity or for that Business Maturity, and two Lean is a lifetime journey, and unless your company is intending to be closed for good sometime soon, you had better keep assuming you are nowhere near the end of the journey. Do these two statements sound harsh well yes they do, but in reality they are not. To understand why they are in fact good positions is what we will touch on in the rest of this article.

Continuous Improvement or Why the Lean Journey Never Ends

Continuous Improvement is one of the fundamental concepts that Lean is based on. Thus today’s great performance becomes next period’s average performance, and the period after that’s poor performance. It is the same reason that most benchmarking attempts fail to deliver sustainable results. It is an unfortunate fact of life that if you give people, a set goal they will try to achieve it, but if that goal is stated in a way that implies it is an ultimate goal, it can than become a crippling disease that blocks further growth. In reality there is only one benchmark that means anything; your current state of performance. Using that as a benchmark, you set an improvement target that will force your company to stretch itself to attain it in the next year. The following year you again take your current state as the new benchmark, and set new goals to stretch your organization again. Does it in the end matter how and if each new goal is actually met, no what matters is that your organization is showing constant small improvements. As long as goals are an achievable stretch overtime, you will find that in most years they are met.

Let us be honest, unless you are actually working to get just a little bit better constantly you are actually not experiencing Continuous Improvement, but in fact are only improving by occasional focussed jumps (Sporadic Improvement). Continuous Improvement is a business’s life long journey and since a business has an unlimited life span it should always be assumed you are somewhere in the middle of the trip.

Maturity Cycles and Stages

We have gotten use to discussing business cycles like the human life cycle (birth, growth, maturity, death), yet the honest reality is that no business and even very few industries really experience a similar life cycle. The true reality is that business should look to and work on remaining in the growth stage forever. After all when you reach maturity you start to see death coming, and instead of focussing on meeting the needs of the market and growing, you spend your time trying to cash in as many of your chips as you can before you die. When you start to focus on milking a business for all it is worth you stop trying to build it into something better, the two mindsets are totally different.

DuPont

Let’s take a look at an under discussed company DuPont. DuPont started out in the gunpowder industry, and today they are still in that industry. Gunpowder in theory is a mature industry in which little has changed since the advance of smokeless gunpowder, yet DuPont did not follow their industry into maturity; instead the company has constantly innovated and created new products and processes, so that even today the company is in a growth phase. Their constant need and desire for growth has taken them into many fields to name just a few munitions, agricultural products, medical products and drugs, fibres of many types, coatings, paints, and chemicals. Though on certain occasions they have bought other companies to grow, the vast majority of their growth has been in fact from internal innovations. Most of these innovations started by DuPont trying to solve an internal issue to their current business operations, often after they solve their internal issue they find they have developed a new set of skills that can be applied to another industry, or revolutionize a old existing one. Though today they would look like a conglomerate they are in fact a company whose various operations feed off of relationships with each other. If you look throughout their history you will see a constant string of small continuous improvements, occasional huge improvements and steady growth.

Despite being broken up in an anti-trust action DuPont has a company never actually matured, thus they never feel threaten by death. Only when a company comes to think about itself as matured and feels it can no longer grow does the mentality and threat of death start to cause it to fear competition, and the marketplace. DuPont knows that even if certain products decline they will have other new innovative ones to take their place, any true growth company should spend its time focussing on finding innovative products that meet people needs that allow it to make a profit. Competitors are not their threat, complacency is, the only true thing they have to fear is their failure to identify consumer and society needs.

Church and Dwight Co. Inc.

Ever hear on Church and Dwight Co. Inc. (Arm and Hammer baking soda) they are in an industry that hit maturity long ago. Yet the company pours out a steady stream of new products using the sodium bicarbonate, along with introducing additionally uses for their base product baking soda. The result is that they constantly increase their sales of a product almost any chemical company could produce. Their success is based on two factors, a strong relationship with consumers and customers, and constant innovation and improvement; they make something just a little better all the time, while gleaning new ideas from their loyal business base. If you do not let yourself get into the, we have done all we can attitude, it will amaze you just how much more you can do. It use to be that people bought one to two boxes of baking soda a year for baking, today most people by more than that just to keep their frig odour free.

Here are two companies that prove you do not want to get into that maturity milk the cash cow mentality; because when you do you end up giving up on growing and making even more money. Moreover these two companies show us that one of the least discussed ways to Continuously Improve to be Continuously Innovating, innovation is often the easiest way to out compete, your competition. Arm and Hammer has yet to even scratch the surface of all the household uses they know of for their base product. And does anyone really think that DuPont will rollover and quit creating new and innovative products anytime soon.

Conclusions

Firstly a business life does not have a limit imposed on it like we human beings do. Maturity in business is what should be feared, because maturity leads to death, in business our goal should be to keep the organization in perpetual growth phase, to do that may need to constantly improve, but we also need to remember that one part of continuous improvement is constant innovation. Constant innovation means understanding the marketplace’s needs. Since the marketplace is actually made up of average human beings, and organization that maintains strong relationships with everyone will always find new needs to meet, and thus manage to secure their fair share of the market.

Second thing is stop looking for the end of the journey, it really shouldn’t have one. Instead find your pleasure from constantly seeing new things along the way. We need to stop acting like many of our spoiled kids on trips constantly asking are “we there yet?”, when we could be enjoying all there is to see along the way. Stop waiting to celebrate some big final victory, and enjoy all the little ones on the way.

Forget all those two dimensional matrixes, after all when was life two dimensional. Anything you do in life involves so many different factors no theory will every really explain life and how we humans act. Using any artificial gauge or rating system, will derail your organization into complacency faster than a broken rail will derail a locomotive.

Kids and Autonomous Maintenance

Who often do our children come to us with a complaint about how one of their toys, gadgets, or sports equipment. How often could these problems have been avoided if we would have taken the time to show them how to look after it themselves?

Yes even I was guilty of this one, because it I just did not want to take 20 or 30 minutes to show my daughter how to look after something properly. Yet lately I have started taking the time to have her fix things with my support and assistance instead of just doing it myself. The surprise is that as she learns to handle her own problems she comes to me far less for help. Additionally all her things are now being look after better than before.

Image Courtesy of Cecelia / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Little things such as how to add air to their bikes tires, how to clean their computer screen, changing batteries in the electronic devices. I am now realizing that I was teaching her to be helpless, something my parents never did. I grew up on a working farm, my father never really had a lot of spare time especially so in the spring when planting season created 16 hour days. My siblings and I all learned to swap batteries for ourselves when we need to, additionally, if my bike required air for its tires, or basic lubrication, it was my job. By the time we started to help around the farm, we knew how to do most basic autonomous maintenance jobs and did them without ever being told, we had learned that it was just part of the job. Cleaning your tools and the equipment was another thing that we just knew had to be done, and at the end of a job or day you did it.

When I played hockey, I knew that it was my job to look after all my equipment, which meant that after each game or practise, you clean and dried it so that it would be ready to use again. My parents never did it for us, in fact if we did not look after it we would be out of the sports program. Out of all the teammates I had over the years, I knew only one kid whose parents look after their gear for them, he did last long in on the team, and he never really had the drive to do much. I feel that taking responsibility for our gear also helped teach us the discipline and responsibility to help us do well in the game as well.

Why is Autonomous Maintenance Important for Them to Learn?

Today as our kids get older and they progress in school they need computers to do a multitude of things. Unfortunately our kids often do not look after these expensive educational requirements. Rarely do I talk to a friend with kids that they do not complain about their kids not look after or caring for their things, but who is to blame? We are because we do not teach them how to look after their things, and if we do we do not enforce the requirements of good maintenance upon them. In that regard I learned from the problems with my oldest and now I am spending my time teaching the younger one the right way. At 9 she has her own computer which is an eight year old laptop I had. Despite it many limitations, it works perfectly for her still. She has all her files better organized, and she keep her bookmarks cleaner than I do, and to date I have never had to fix, something I could not say for her brother computer even though he was much older. Teaching her the basics of good computer care is paying off for me, by saving me the horrible waste of time it takes to restore and clean up a computer that has been misused. She watches for the warnings and asks me if she should allow a download or not (the exception is that she already knows some programs should be allowed to update). The reality was that it took me a couple hours of teaching her the computer, and having her help set it up, it has saved me dozens of hours in repair time each year (one total restore can take 5 hours her older brothers computer was restored 3 to 4 times per year).

How many battery powered devices do your needs have, changing batteries my take just a few minutes of your time, but you do it dozens of times per year. While you are doing it for them they are standing there doing nothing but waiting, and you are losing 5 to 10 minutes from something else you wanted to actually do. If you teach them how they won’t be standing around waiting and you can be doing what you wanted to do.

Another area bicycles are great for teaching them to look after something. Any kid can take a hand pump and inflate their own tires; they can also learn to lubricate the few parts that need it. After all even a cheap bike cost $100.00 today, if they are looked after they will last a very long time, if not you can buy them a new one every year if not sooner. Once they get use to looking after stuff, and they get old enough to help out with things like mowing the lawn, they will have developed and understanding of the need to do those little basic maintenance jobs that help keep your equipment running (a lawnmower is a costly purchase, if looked after they can last for a long time).

What else do They Gain?

As they get old enough to start working they will have developed good work habits that include looking after the equipment and tools they work with (Autonomous Maintenance). If you would hear how rarely employers find new workers that look after the tools and equipment, you would understand just how much better they will shine if they have been taught to do it. They will get better jobs, keep them, and earn themselves glowing recommendations from their employers, simply because they have a skill set that is rarely seen today. In the future’s increasingly competitive job market our kids will need all the help they can get.

We often hear horror stories about organizations when they attempt to change even some of the smallest things in the operation. Why is that the case? That will be the first question we will attempt to answer. While answering it we will provide the answer to the second question how do get change to start in an organization.

Why is Change so Hard?

The reality is that it is not hard, in fact all of us have gone through many changes in our lives and most of us still do. What we often forget is that in an organization there are other factors that play into change acceptance; if these are not dealt with change will fail.

The first is control, in our lives whether we really had control of the changes or not we assume we did to some extent. While at work change is often thrust upon us without anyone even bothering to take the time and talk to us. Holding discussions and listen to and dealing with the concerns of those that will be affected, gives them a feeling of having had at least a minimum level of control. Once people feel they have some control over the changes that are happening they become more willing to accept it.

Fear is another factor, and whenever there is a change the outcome is not always known, it is a natural human reaction to show some fear of the unknown. This becomes very crippling in organizations that have been extremely stagnated for a long time, or organization where change has often come at the expensive of certain groups. Organizations that have long histories of steady change, rarely react to it, it is simply part of their life. Once again open honest discussion will help to reduce fear and increase acceptance.

Tradition yes we all have them, and often they run the strongest in organizations. Traditions are in reality attitudes and beliefs that have become imbedded into our lives overtime. When change conflicts with them they fight to maintain the status quo, or they will be eliminated. Once again this is a big problem in organizations that have been stagnating, for a long period of time. The only way to real traditions is again through honest open discussion, breaking traditions requires organizational acceptance to changing them.

Relationship issues, play another big part in an organization’s ability successfully implements Continuous Improvement (Continuous Improvement is in fact Continuous Change). Among the relationship issues that often block change from happening and thus also block improvement is trust and respect. If the inter-personal relationship that drive an organization are not based on mutual trust and respect for each other, there will always be conflicts occurring as someone see any change as a threat to them and their survival. It is a natural human reaction to resist threats to ones survival, and it is essential to realize that part of survival is maintain your; job, position, salary, wage, and benefits. Often when people do not know how the changes will affect their future they will assume it to be negative, and thus resist it. The only way to overcome the lack of trust and respect is through discussion, and sincere actions. Upper level staff need to first show those under them respect and sincerity before they can earn the respect and trust of those under them. This takes time and effort, but it is the true goal of the TPS central pillar of respect for people.

Conclusions and Advice to Get Change Started

First of all if there is high resistance to change in your organization start out with small steps, work on building relationships between various groups of stakeholders. As managers and executives, start taking the time to talk to and truly understand the rest of your workforce. Actively show respect and start trusting the people around you, if you do not first show it to them they will never show to you. As they start to respect you, you will find that they also begin to trust you. At this point you really need to double your effort on relationship building, but remember that at this point you start actually doing what your title describes, you mange the people under you, you do not do the work they do it. As their trust and respect for you grows you will find that they will handle more and more of the work load freeing you to deal more and more with the relationships, you have with them. This allows you to focus on managing them instead controlling them.

Good management does not entail controlling people it entails actually managing them to get the best result for the whole organization including them.

Mark Graban’s Blog Post actress Maria Menounos is quoted talking about Kaizen as a personal improvement tool.
An Unexpected Lean Thinker and her “Kaizen Lifestyle”

If a Hollywood Celeb can get what kaizen is really all about, why are so many of the rest of us still having a hard getting it? We would really like to hear your ideas on that question.

Next week we will post a blog piece on using Lean for Personal Improvement.

In today’s post we will outline a suggested model for succeeding in Lean Implementation that we firmly believe will work. Although we have heard of dozens of different suggestions as to how to achieve success in Lean Implementation lately, and more arrive daily most we feel come just slightly short.

One such example was in this week’s newsletter from Quality Digest called How to Succeed with Lean by writer Angelo Lyall. Although much of the article is very good, we feel that it ceratin changes have a better result.

He stated that most enterprises trying to implement Lean use the following order:

1. Configure, Manage and Improve Processes
2. Enable Capabilities to Support Improvement
3. Result in Competitive Products and Services

Using this pattern he stated that they often fail because there is no connection to strategy and they often fail to enable the required support capabilities.

He then went on to suggest the following order to succeed with using Lean:

1. Market Knowledge
2. Strategic Decisions
3. Configure, Manage and Improve Processes
4. Enable Capabilities to Support Improvement
5. Result in Competitive Products and Services

In this regard I would disagree with him in that the implementation model still lacks certain requirements and it is still out of order.

This is the suggestion I would make for an implementation pattern that will succeed:

1. Market Knowledge
2. Strategic Planning
3. Enable Support Capabilities
4. Start Culture Development
5. Determine Current State
6. Define Best Opportunities
7. Configure, Manage and Improve Processes Starting with the Best Opportunities
8. Result in Successful Products and Services

Let’s look at each individually now.

Market Knowledge

1. Understand What the Market Currently Wants – This means knowing what the marketplace is currently asking for.
2. Understand What the Market Needs
   1. This means taking the time to understand what the marketplace actually needs. Often what the market asks for has nothing in reality to do with what they truly need, only the most successful enterprises take the time to understand the markets true needs.
   2. To understand their true needs you cannot just focus on what they ask for now, most times people have no real idea about what they need till they see it or experience an event that shifts their thinking. No one was asking for smaller Netbook style computers, yet it turns out there was a huge market for them. All but a few computer makers ignored it and certain players focused on it and won huge gains. The same can be said for the minivan.
   3. In understanding their needs you need to also be able to understand what possible economic changes may have on the economy in a few months to years (time frame is product design timeline dependent). You may even have to plan alternate options, with determining factors as to which direction to take as the launch date approaches.
   4. If you do not truly understand and relate to the market you will find yourself out of step as often as you find yourself in step with the market. This is the most likely cause for many of the problems the North American Auto Makers faced; they focussed on engine power, prestige, and luxury; which unfortunately many consumers could not afford. Their Asian competition instead focused on fuel efficiency, value, affordability, and quality; and thus won huge gains in the North American marketplace. The Asian foresaw what high fuel prices would cause.
3. Understand the Other Players
   1. Know which other player has the ability to best meet what needs.
   2. Do not focus excess attention on the other players. Too often companies follow each other down roads they should have avoided. Unless you are a low cost producer trying to compete on price is stupid, you won’t win. You have to know which market segments others can better dominate, so that you do not waste effort trying to compete where you have no real opportunity.
   3. Stop thinking about beating your competition; instead focus on serving a profitable market segment that you can win. No one can be everything to everyone, instead try being everything to just certain groups of consumers. When you focus on the consumer not your competition, you will be meeting their needs, and not wasting time, money, effort, and energy chasing your competitions tail.

Strategic Planning

1. Determine where your ownership wants the company to go. This is often the least discussed factor in successful Lean.
   1. If all the ownership wants is to get a dividend, or a quick gain, do not start a Lean effort it won’t work.
   2. If your ownership is long-term growth oriented and truly wants to build the enterprise than Lean is part of doing just that.
2. Line your enterprise up to meet the needs of your selected markets.
3. Eliminate any and all distractions from those markets. Chasing fringe markets causes needless distraction, and can often lead you to make huge mistakes that weaken your position with the true market.
   1. Fringe markets often want options the true market does not need or even want, designing for them adds far more cost than most companies care to admit.
   2. The result is that surviving the fringe makes you uncompetitive in the real market.
   3. The only servable fringe market is one that will bear the whole cost of getting its options, but if fringe markets did that they would in fact be another segment worth serving not a fringe.
4. Line up reward systems with the desired strategy.
   1. Ownership’s dividends, stock growth, and other rewards need to be long range focussed.
   2. Executive need to be rewarded for where the company gets 5 to 10 years from now, not on what happen in the last year or quarter.
   3. Managers’ rewards need to be lined up with the timelines they can affect, as they get closer to the actual production floor they need to become closer to the present. At the higher levels they should be at or near the same range as executives.
   4. Staff wages and rewards should be based on the value they generate, the more value they can produce or retain for the organization the higher the rewards. Pay should always be related to value creation or preservation effort, not on arbitrary economic numbers.

Enable Support Capabilities

1. You cannot expect success to take hold by making changes and then enabling the support systems for the change. For success to take hold the support systems need to be in place first, and then you can make process changes and sustain the results.

Start Culture Development

1. For lasting change to occur an enterprises culture must change as well. This is even more important with true Lean transformation, as co-operation between all various groups is essential in Lean.
2. Respect for People at all levels is a fundamental for successful Lean. Respect is a cultural choice in an organization, which leads to loyalty among the various groups both within the enterprises and external to it. Supplier loyalty and more importantly customer loyalty only occur when an enterprises has already loyal ownership, executives, managers and staff.
3. Lean also relies on true information being passed about, only an open and respectful organization, will have only honest true and verified information moving through it. In other organization where mutual respect lacks only tainted information will flow freely, as everyone is out to protect themselves.

Determine Current State

If you do not honestly know where you are how are you going to know what to do first.

1. Understand Each of These:
   1. The Business You Are In
   2. The Market(s) you Serve
   3. Your Present Capabilities
   4. Your Present Weaknesses
   5. Your Current Processes

Define Best Opportunities:

1. Which markets can deliver the best results?
2. Which Processes can be improved the most?

Configure, Manage and Improve Processes Starting with the Best Opportunities

1. Start with the opportunities and add other overtime. Tackling too much at once will weaken your organization, and result in poorer performance.
2. Never stop improving. The instant you accept today’s result as good enough will be the day you start to slide back to an uncompetitive position. Life is a journey not a destination, life’s journey ends in death, and so will an enterprise’s journey.

Result in Successful Products and Services

1. You have just been rewarded, remember to start all over again, resting on your current success is the fastest way back to failure there is.

The benefits of 5S to students come both immediately and in the long-term as well, we will start by outlining the immediate ones and then deal with the long-term ones.

Immediate 5S Benefits for Students

1. Better Organization

Disorganization is a leading cause of frustrated students.

First of all the benefits of learning 5S is that our kids will be better organized. Better organization will allow them to fully enjoy their life. Better organization will help them get more done in less time. It will reduce their expenses, as they will be creating less waste, because they will lose fewer items, and damage fewer items.

2. Reduction in Wasted Time

Being a parent I know from personal experience the agony of walking into the rooms of my kids, and the agony their desks cause their teachers. Poor organizational skills result in countless numbers of needless searches for missing items. It may not seem like much of a waste to lose 15 minutes searching for something, but when that is compared to the two minutes it would have taken to put the item away neatly when last used it reveals a huge waste. Multiple that fact, just three or four times per day, and you find that your kids lose a minimum of an hour a day to a totally useless waste of time. That time could have been used to either study, or have been used to strengthen family relationships.

An hour a day adds up to 365 per year that kind of time could have been put to better use getting extra exercise, reading, or developing other skills and talents. The painful truth is that when we do not stress organization to our children, we end up letting them be less than they could be. We also tell them that they are in reality not very important. 5S can help them regain hundreds of hours every year from wasteful searches, and give them that time to have more fun, and do better in life and school.

3. Improved Performance

They will do better for two main reasons, one they will free up time wasted in searching, which instead can be used to do more school work, or practise to develop talents and skills. Secondly better organizational skills will help them better organize their thoughts as well, this will lead to better projects, and improved results in their school work, and in sports and other hobbies such as music.

Long-term 5S Benefits for Students

1. Better Results at Work

Just like in school more organized kids will end up being more organized workers, and sooner or later they will enter the work force. Coming into the work world knowing better organization and knowing 5S will empower them to be leading performers in the work world. Since we all know that work has become increasingly competitive, future workers if they wish to enjoy the benefits of prime employment opportunities, will need to be able to effectively organize, themselves at work and help keep their workplaces organized. Unless we want of kids to have to survive in low paying jobs they need the skills to achieve and sustain success in a highly competitive world.

2. Improved Life Skills

Mess is a never ending battle in life.

Just like at work organizational skills will help them keep their personal lives better organized; this will help them cut out many wastes that we have all come to accept around our homes. How many of us end up with more home than we need just to store all the useless clutter we have managed to collect. How often have we ended up throwing away products that we bought, and never really used because when we needed them we could find them immediately? How often have we had to run to a store to get something because we could find it at home or we just forgot to get it? 5S is the concept, which can help our kids avoid these pitfalls.

In our next post on this subject we will suggest some ideas as to how and when we should start training our kids in 5S.

We would like to thank WebBizIdeas for their help and hard work on the new site, and all the support they have and are providing our company.

ELSE Inc. Team