Hi Ryan. This has got to be the best podcast you have ever done. Thank you, it is so fundamentally inspiring. Lean is the Grow people process. 1) Morning meeting 2) Improvement time 3) Learn from others. Awesome. my other take away "We don't do work! we make changes / experiments first each day, and then spend the rest of the day learning if theses experiments worked" Simply beautiful. Thank you 🙏😎🎉
Excellent video gents! I have been struggling for years to get my team motivated and involved in continuous improvement. Looking forward to implementing small incremental additions. As you suggest, I will start with a basic morning meeting. This has always felt uncomfortable for me in complete silence with little to know engagements from the team. I like the idea of rotating through everyone to host each meeting to get more involvement. I would love to see an example video of one of your morning meeting’s to see how you structure them and get the team engaged. If I am ever in Ireland, I will be sure to stop in for a tour! Great job as always!
Hi Ryan Stumbled upon your videos and have watched a few now, I am quite hooked as our factory is in the small start of a LEAN journey. We have for 6 months been running a "morning" meeting for every shift on a line and a leader/specialist meeting at noon. This have been great at tracking data in certain trouble areas but I wanted to hear what you could do to make the meetings drive improvement? And how do you handle the amount of improvement suggestions? We operate a food factory and are subject to validation trails every time any change to the process is made.
My biggest problem with Lean and no one talks about this is when you have language barriers as individual constant improvement is down to the employee understanding and it is near on impossible when you have 4 different languages spoken on a shop floor.
I suggest you read the book “improvement starts with I” by Tom Hughes. Amazing book, a lot of insight ,but also mentions how he dealt with different languages on the shop floor.
I am faced with this challenge as well. I work in catering and special events. Often the staff assigned to work with me is not trained and language challenged too. What did we do? Encouraged staff to attend ESL (English as a Second Language) skills classes, to learn how to read and write in our case, in English. Many times, classes are at night. Based in So Cal, so Spanish in various forms is the most spoken second language. With the recent influx of immigrants -- the spoken languages list has expanded. Russian, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Arabic are now more common. Some of the people are very interested and capable of great work. Getting them to ESL classes is a win-win for everyone. We offer incentives and rewards for attending and passing tests. They are improved which is the first principal of Lean; People Development. If they will not attend, you need to talk to them about the benefits learning the language or realize that perhaps they need to go somewhere else. I know of several accidents and even of a few fatalities caused by language barriers. Some companies have moved to English only speaking and writing while working because of accidents, and quality issues. Before Gemba doc's, we created SOP’s and had them translated into multiple languages. Often internal staff was able to do the work. Therefore, utilizing unused talent. From Paul Akers, we learned to make videos and use QR codes posted where the work and questions take place - linked to TH-cam videos. Gema docs have both capabilities now check it out. gembadocs.com/ To help further with the language issues, there’s a software program called Descript. You make a video, pass through the software and it will translate into 26 different languages, in printed and now spoken formats. You can also build a library in Descript of specfic industry jargon and nomenclature, so Descript knows about specific words. www.descript.com/ Hope this helps…
I’ve been at my company for 17 years and seen hundreds of employees come and go from management to entry level low pay shop worker. The VP is a micro manager, very problematic and always trying schemes to improve but no follow through ever. His great ideas last about 3 months then gone. We had no safety training for years until numerous injuries and lawsuits. He has caused a stagnant environment, withheld yearly raises. Still no training program and now hired part time highschool kids at a low wage and no benefits. The VP is a train wreck and too important to talk to people and companies not that big. He won’t order dumpsters until they are full and not on a schedule so they get us last and garbage is everywhere. No maintenance on machinery until they break and then down for weeks. I enjoy ever minute of the chaos.
The morning meeting, if not kept "real" it turns into management only standing in a mostly empty Obeya room, for 4 hours of buzzword showboating and fancy pie charts, which yields nothing of any use or purpose. The Japanese, specifically Toyota (the home of lean), get it right because whilst they do have a strict hierarchy, they don't exclude input from people based purely on those voices not being part of management, they DO NOT tolerate showboating, buzzwords, etc and consider extroverted tendencies to be a sign of low intellectual value, "the empty vessel makes the most noise". The reason, the root cause of lean failure western businesses, is essentially because western culture mistakes extroversion for intelligence.
Did you do any kind of lean training of the organisation before embarking on your lean journey? Example training on value of pull system, kanban, identifying and elimination waste, 5S, visual management and work place organisation etc.
Did you have any lean trainers or champions within your organization to help train your employees or did you do all your training in morning meetings? I was hoping to understand the steps you took to implement your lean journey… over several years. I understand you started with one small area at a time and went slow vs a major training event for the entire organization.
Interesting interview. Thank you TH-cam algorithm. I was lookin into Lean a few years back. My takeaway was that Lean = Common sense in a shroud of buzzwords. The lean principles was already 100% integrated in my way of thinking without ever studying the concepts. It surprised me that there was a market for lean consultants and even educations available. My conclusion was that something had gone wrong in the education system and management theories over the years, that had led people astray and caused inefficient structuring of organisations. Lean getting widely adopted is just a return to common sense thinking. Curious to hear your thoughts if you given thought about this subject.
Lean is basically TPS, "Toyota Production System", and you're right it has become "common sense in a shroud of buzzwords", because people are trying to sell it to western businesses and western businesses lean heavily torward a "brain in a jar on the way in" office based culture, social class hierarchy and frankly BS. So it has to be full of boardroom buzzwords in order for it to be taken seriously. It has to subtly manipulate top down views and opinions on how things should be done, for example white collar staff trying to implement clean desk policies in a naturally chaotic engineering environment, lean would replace that "clean desk policy" with 5s (another buzzword), taking a common sense approach to have a tidy work area, instead of hiding everything away to look pretty. Lets say you're job is refurbishing engines, you've got cylinder head bolts, used bolts on the left, new bolts on the right, and then some tie wearing tosspot on a "clean desk" mission takes all your (and your colleagues) used and new cylinder head bolts and shoves them all into one draw under your benches, they have NO idea that these things cannot be reused, so the next day you spend hours sorting them out, you miss quotas and you take all the flak for it, whilst the idiot responsible sits in his air conditioned office denying all knowledge. Lean would in that case put marked boxes or marked out areas for each bolt type, not for the benefit of the person doing the job (because they know what they're doing), but to keep the office staff happy and stop them trying to mess with it. True lean would seek to break down the social class system within western business, where unqualified low IQ people in offices, dictate how highly qualified and experienced people should be doing their jobs, but this will never happen and as such western business will NEVER be able to achieve the levels of efficiency that the Japanese do, i think the last time I looked the UK manufacturing was on average 30% less efficient than the rest of the world and we typically have 3 office staff for every person who actually "adds value" in the manufacturing process.
@@EricImel It's simple, the hard part is convincing management to think outside of the status quo that's probably existed for well over 20 years and got most of them promoted to where they are. That's why you see all "fake lean", the stuff that makes no difference but gives management what they think they want, whilst the real stuff is going on in the background. The real nitty gritty of lean is like quality, it's very hard to measure and quantify and put on fancy pie charts.
Hi Ryan. This has got to be the best podcast you have ever done. Thank you, it is so fundamentally inspiring. Lean is the Grow people process. 1) Morning meeting 2) Improvement time 3) Learn from others. Awesome. my other take away "We don't do work! we make changes / experiments first each day, and then spend the rest of the day learning if theses experiments worked" Simply beautiful. Thank you 🙏😎🎉
Wow, thank you so much Granger, great takeaways :)
Great session!! Everyone should start with being humble, accept that you are doing it wrong and THAT YOU CAN IMPROVE EVERYTHING!!
Amazing Pablo, thankyou for watching :)
Epic! Ought to be required watching by any one on a lean journey!
Thankyou for watching
Great episode, thank you for doing this podcast 🙏
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent video gents! I have been struggling for years to get my team motivated and involved in continuous improvement. Looking forward to implementing small incremental additions. As you suggest, I will start with a basic morning meeting. This has always felt uncomfortable for me in complete silence with little to know engagements from the team. I like the idea of rotating through everyone to host each meeting to get more involvement. I would love to see an example video of one of your morning meeting’s to see how you structure them and get the team engaged. If I am ever in Ireland, I will be sure to stop in for a tour! Great job as always!
Ryan, thank you for sharing your practical ideas on Lean
My pleasure!
Hi Ryan
Stumbled upon your videos and have watched a few now, I am quite hooked as our factory is in the small start of a LEAN journey. We have for 6 months been running a "morning" meeting for every shift on a line and a leader/specialist meeting at noon. This have been great at tracking data in certain trouble areas but I wanted to hear what you could do to make the meetings drive improvement?
And how do you handle the amount of improvement suggestions? We operate a food factory and are subject to validation trails every time any change to the process is made.
Absolutely amazing!
Another great session.
Thanks for listening
Another masterpiece!!!👌
My biggest problem with Lean and no one talks about this is when you have language barriers as individual constant improvement is down to the employee understanding and it is near on impossible when you have 4 different languages spoken on a shop floor.
I suggest you read the book “improvement starts with I” by Tom Hughes. Amazing book, a lot of insight ,but also mentions how he dealt with different languages on the shop floor.
I am faced with this challenge as well.
I work in catering and special events. Often the staff assigned to work with me is not trained and language challenged too.
What did we do?
Encouraged staff to attend ESL (English as a Second Language) skills classes, to learn how to read and write in our case, in English. Many times, classes are at night.
Based in So Cal, so Spanish in various forms is the most spoken second language. With the recent influx of immigrants -- the spoken languages list has expanded. Russian, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Arabic are now more common.
Some of the people are very interested and capable of great work. Getting them to ESL classes is a win-win for everyone. We offer incentives and rewards for attending and passing tests. They are improved which is the first principal of Lean; People Development.
If they will not attend, you need to talk to them about the benefits learning the language or realize that perhaps they need to go somewhere else.
I know of several accidents and even of a few fatalities caused by language barriers. Some companies have moved to English only speaking and writing while working because of accidents, and quality issues.
Before Gemba doc's, we created SOP’s and had them translated into multiple languages. Often internal staff was able to do the work. Therefore, utilizing unused talent.
From Paul Akers, we learned to make videos and use QR codes posted where the work and questions take place - linked to TH-cam videos. Gema docs have both capabilities now check it out. gembadocs.com/
To help further with the language issues, there’s a software program called Descript. You make a video, pass through the software and it will translate into 26 different languages, in printed and now spoken formats. You can also build a library in Descript of specfic industry jargon and nomenclature, so Descript knows about specific words. www.descript.com/
Hope this helps…
I’ve been at my company for 17 years and seen hundreds of employees come and go from management to entry level low pay shop worker. The VP is a micro manager, very problematic and always trying schemes to improve but no follow through ever. His great ideas last about 3 months then gone. We had no safety training for years until numerous injuries and lawsuits. He has caused a stagnant environment, withheld yearly raises. Still no training program and now hired part time highschool kids at a low wage and no benefits. The VP is a train wreck and too important to talk to people and companies not that big. He won’t order dumpsters until they are full and not on a schedule so they get us last and garbage is everywhere. No maintenance on machinery until they break and then down for weeks. I enjoy ever minute of the chaos.
The morning meeting, if not kept "real" it turns into management only standing in a mostly empty Obeya room, for 4 hours of buzzword showboating and fancy pie charts, which yields nothing of any use or purpose.
The Japanese, specifically Toyota (the home of lean), get it right because whilst they do have a strict hierarchy, they don't exclude input from people based purely on those voices not being part of management, they DO NOT tolerate showboating, buzzwords, etc and consider extroverted tendencies to be a sign of low intellectual value, "the empty vessel makes the most noise".
The reason, the root cause of lean failure western businesses, is essentially because western culture mistakes extroversion for intelligence.
Did you do any kind of lean training of the organisation before embarking on your lean journey? Example training on value of pull system, kanban, identifying and elimination waste, 5S, visual management and work place organisation etc.
We learned everything from reading books, TH-cam & visiting other companies and bringing back some things that would work for us.
Did you have any lean trainers or champions within your organization to help train your employees or did you do all your training in morning meetings? I was hoping to understand the steps you took to implement your lean journey… over several years. I understand you started with one small area at a time and went slow vs a major training event for the entire organization.
Amazing
Hi, what is called ''jucatan''? sharing ideas... Thanks.
Yokoten kai 横展 開 translate to something like horizontal deployment in English
How would an all hands morning meeting work with companies with a few thousand employees with offices in different time zones?
With a leadership team of problem solvers that ALL align with the same vision for the company :)
Agree
Interesting interview. Thank you TH-cam algorithm.
I was lookin into Lean a few years back. My takeaway was that Lean = Common sense in a shroud of buzzwords. The lean principles was already 100% integrated in my way of thinking without ever studying the concepts. It surprised me that there was a market for lean consultants and even educations available.
My conclusion was that something had gone wrong in the education system and management theories over the years, that had led people astray and caused inefficient structuring of organisations. Lean getting widely adopted is just a return to common sense thinking.
Curious to hear your thoughts if you given thought about this subject.
Lean is basically TPS, "Toyota Production System", and you're right it has become "common sense in a shroud of buzzwords", because people are trying to sell it to western businesses and western businesses lean heavily torward a "brain in a jar on the way in" office based culture, social class hierarchy and frankly BS. So it has to be full of boardroom buzzwords in order for it to be taken seriously. It has to subtly manipulate top down views and opinions on how things should be done, for example white collar staff trying to implement clean desk policies in a naturally chaotic engineering environment, lean would replace that "clean desk policy" with 5s (another buzzword), taking a common sense approach to have a tidy work area, instead of hiding everything away to look pretty.
Lets say you're job is refurbishing engines, you've got cylinder head bolts, used bolts on the left, new bolts on the right, and then some tie wearing tosspot on a "clean desk" mission takes all your (and your colleagues) used and new cylinder head bolts and shoves them all into one draw under your benches, they have NO idea that these things cannot be reused, so the next day you spend hours sorting them out, you miss quotas and you take all the flak for it, whilst the idiot responsible sits in his air conditioned office denying all knowledge.
Lean would in that case put marked boxes or marked out areas for each bolt type, not for the benefit of the person doing the job (because they know what they're doing), but to keep the office staff happy and stop them trying to mess with it.
True lean would seek to break down the social class system within western business, where unqualified low IQ people in offices, dictate how highly qualified and experienced people should be doing their jobs, but this will never happen and as such western business will NEVER be able to achieve the levels of efficiency that the Japanese do, i think the last time I looked the UK manufacturing was on average 30% less efficient than the rest of the world and we typically have 3 office staff for every person who actually "adds value" in the manufacturing process.
Paul Akers often talks about "smart people can't believe how simple it is." It is so true. Lean thinking just feels so intuitive after a while.
@@EricImel It's simple, the hard part is convincing management to think outside of the status quo that's probably existed for well over 20 years and got most of them promoted to where they are. That's why you see all "fake lean", the stuff that makes no difference but gives management what they think they want, whilst the real stuff is going on in the background. The real nitty gritty of lean is like quality, it's very hard to measure and quantify and put on fancy pie charts.