00:00:00 - 00:25:00 The video discusses the challenges a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager faces and provides advice for their first 90 days in the role. The speaker emphasizes the importance of building relationships across departments to lead effective improvement teams, balancing performance excellence and organizational capabilities, and checking organizational alignment to prevent the house of cards from falling. Additionally, the speaker suggests that the new CI manager make at least two improvements within the first 90 days to establish trust and goodwill and focus on building relationships with colleagues to gain informal leadership and clout. See less 00:00:00 will need to drive and you need people to support you and be on your side. In this section, Tom emphasizes the importance of being a strong partner for general management as a CI manager. He mentions that although there might not be a department, it is crucial to align with the plant manager and the operations manager about their goals and expectations to support their vision. Additionally, he advises that building connections with the management team and formal and informal leaders throughout the organization will be helpful in driving improvement projects. 00:05:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the role of a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager and the challenges they face. The CI manager is expected to lead and manage improvement programs to drive change throughout the organization. However, they are not the direct manager of those working on the projects, so they need to build relationships across departments to bridge the organization's parts together and lead effective improvement teams. During the first 90 days in this role, the speaker advises spending 50% of your time getting to know the organization and making improvements, while keeping the other 50% free for coffee chats, helping colleagues, and learning about the organization's priorities and struggles. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of balancing performance excellence and organizational capabilities, ensuring that high performance is supported by a strong set of organizational and learning capabilities to prevent the house of cards from falling. 00:10:00 In this section, the excerpt explores the importance of a CI manager checking organizational alignment and how it has a strong impact on a factory's operational line. As a CI manager, you must check where the organization is leaning and give a counterweight to the preference in alignment with the factory's performance. Additionally, the quality of the control loop of an organization is often considered part of the capabilities of the organization, and it is essential to check how the root cause analysis teams and the performance outputs are managed. Ensuring this team has proper support from the management layer of an organization is crucial for the success of an Improvement team. 00:15:00 In this section, the speaker discusses how a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager can show improvement in the first 90 days by moving in the right direction and providing support, structure, and motivation for colleagues to work on improvement initiatives. The speaker advises managers to balance the focus on performance improvement and CI management, with corporate guidelines available to help determine a good balance. The speaker also introduces the Stars framework, which provides a way of looking at an organization's level of startup, turnaround, growth, realignment, or sustainability, and is useful for managers in the first 90 days to understand the organization's culture. 00:20:00 In this section, the speaker emphasizes the need for a different management and communication style for startups versus established businesses, and suggests discussing this framework for the Continuous Improvement program with management to determine the current phase of the program. The speaker notes that the phase of the program will dictate different approaches for CI, such as accelerating momentum or training team leaders. Additionally, the speaker encourages the new CI manager to have a discussion with direct managers and peers to determine their views and expectations for CI and balance of performance and capability building. Finally, the speaker suggests that the CI manager focus on building relationships with colleagues to gain informal leadership and clout. 00:25:00 In this section, the speaker provides advice for the first 90 days in a Continuous Improvement (CI) management role, suggesting that starting with rebalancing and checking the management of CI activities is necessary to evaluate the actual performance. They also advise making two improvements within the first 90 days to show their worth and improve the communication flow, especially on the CI management side. They assert that building a CI management role is not for short-term gain and generally doesn't need to show immediate monetary results but rather guide and support to establish trust and Goodwill.
Hi Tom, I really enjoyed this video. I have been a CI Engineer myself and things always tend to be quite vague for me. But I'm glad what i did was in line with most of what you outline in this video. I would also appreciate if this content were to be put into a document format, as it might reach more audience.
Thanks Li, good to hear. You know, I'm not that much of a writer. I started writing in a couple of ways, but it's just not a format that draws me in and I don't get the energy from it to really keep it up consistently. Maybe that'll come with age and experience. The desire is there (and the respect for people who do get a book out), but for now I'd rather spend the same time I'd probably need to write one good article on making two videos 🤷♂ Come to think of it, I love audio books and videos for my own learning too. I'll read books when needed, but even for learning it's a secondary medium for me 😅
Happy to hear you found value in my videos. Do remember that this is only my view on it, and it would serve you well to check out multiple viewpoints to make your own style.
Thanks for sharing that, I’m glad you like my work. Ooph, latest developments - I sometimes put some effect or benefit of recent developments in my content (e.g. effect of labor shortage on loss priorities), but I don’t think I’ll have much to add to the ChatGPT discussion 😅 Some more discussions on digital meetings, KPI boards and using data lakes might be interesting for future videos though…
Thanks for sharing that feedback. Many people do, and not just with my videos, so all the more power to you if that’s how you like to consume learning content - as long as you get good value from them.
@@TomMentink new subscriber here and really have a lot of videos to catch up on from the last three years. Great content and appreciate the visual nature of your explanations. It really helps me digest your explanations and recall them later.
Just to recap: in this context, hard skills are the more technical/analytical skills, while soft skills cover change management, communication and the like (and know that 'soft skills' are just as hard to master as the hard skills 😉). So hard skills important for a strong start as a CI manager are things like: able to analyse operational performance, link performance to financial numbers, performance variation analysis, calculate OEE and its constituents, make a material balance, design a performance and projects follow up meeting structure, guesstimate the operational benefit of an improvement proposal and calculate the expected financial benefit based on that; and also more basic skills like: read a P&L, able to make a 4M fishbone, do a 5 Why, able to set up a KPI tree, organise an A3 problem solving team or Kaizen Event, etc.
Thanks. I'm trying to transition from inventory management and tbh depending on the industry (food and beverage manufacturing) it sounds more like an industrial engineering role. Wearas I see it a Business analysis role with a specialization in lean principles
Hi Tom. I hope you're doing great. Excellent video as always. Do you have any advice or tips when changing industry? I recently accepted an offer as a CI Analyst in aviation and aerospace industry. Specifically, engine MROs (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) The environment is completely different than my comfort zone (semiconductor manufacturing) My new direct manager was kind enough to give me reading materials as a primer to the industry but I'm not sure how to apply my CI experience in this completely different industry. Thanks!
Hi Geon, I had some negative experience in aviation as a Quality/Continuous Improvement Engineer. The trouble I ran into was that my manager, the QA Manager, was really more focused on compliance, than for things to be efficient. I came from automotive industry and Lean is a big focus there. Long story short, it wasn't a good match for me and I ended up leaving. My impression was that aviation is much more conservative and much more strictly regulated than other types of manufacturing. I hope your organization strikes a balance between compliance and efficiency and it turns out to be good experience for you! I did not feel any abnormal learning curve compared to going to another manufacturer per se, as every company has their terminologies. But Tom made a good point in his video, talking to people and getting to know all departments and what problems they face really helps. You should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly. All the best!
Sounds like @@lsx001 got into a change-resistant company, and having your own manager be one of the conservatives makes it even more difficult to affect change. But,... CI is about deploying the company's resources in a more effective way to meet the company's goals - if the company (or whole industry) places great value on safety, producing tightly according to specs and triple-checking quality controls; that's what you've got to work with (at least at the start). You can find improvements in worker efficiency, how materials flow through the process, preventing failures, etc. So to generalise that to Geon's question: check the company's strategic focus; compare what your site manager states as main concerns or points of pride/improvement with the view of managers and specialists from different departments to look for discrepancies (almost always opportunities for real improvement), secondly focus on costs drivers and what stops throughput - those are always in the main focus areas of CI. You will want to get a good understanding of your industry and those engines in particular, even if just to be able to help out your team and contribute in discussions and brainstorming. But your CI skills are useful right off the bat: you're smart, ask the the obvious questions and drill through on any point you don't understand - having your colleagues to explain it to you forces them to really think about the logic again, and they'll often come up with the answer themselves 😃 And Li - thanks for contributing, it's much appreciated!
@@lsx001 Hi Shaoxuan, thanks so much for your perspective! They're very insightful. Fortunately enough, the company I'm going to work for have an established CI program. So hopefully that's a sign for a positive experience. I'll make sure to communicate and listen to all cross-functional teams and get to know the issues they're going through. Thanks so much!
@@lsx001 I just want to update you on my first week of work. So the good news is that CI is a completely independent department that reports directly to the site leader. Quality is completely separate and based from my initial observation, you're absolutely right about their obsession with compliance. There's a corporate push for CI activities so every site have its own CI department and we support each other apparently. I like it so far, completely different than what I'm used to. Thanks for the initial feedback!
00:00:00 - 00:25:00
The video discusses the challenges a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager faces and provides advice for their first 90 days in the role. The speaker emphasizes the importance of building relationships across departments to lead effective improvement teams, balancing performance excellence and organizational capabilities, and checking organizational alignment to prevent the house of cards from falling. Additionally, the speaker suggests that the new CI manager make at least two improvements within the first 90 days to establish trust and goodwill and focus on building relationships with colleagues to gain informal leadership and clout.
See less
00:00:00 will need to drive and you need people to support you and be on your side. In this section, Tom emphasizes the importance of being a strong partner for general management as a CI manager. He mentions that although there might not be a department, it is crucial to align with the plant manager and the operations manager about their goals and expectations to support their vision. Additionally, he advises that building connections with the management team and formal and informal leaders throughout the organization will be helpful in driving improvement projects.
00:05:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the role of a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager and the challenges they face. The CI manager is expected to lead and manage improvement programs to drive change throughout the organization. However, they are not the direct manager of those working on the projects, so they need to build relationships across departments to bridge the organization's parts together and lead effective improvement teams. During the first 90 days in this role, the speaker advises spending 50% of your time getting to know the organization and making improvements, while keeping the other 50% free for coffee chats, helping colleagues, and learning about the organization's priorities and struggles. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of balancing performance excellence and organizational capabilities, ensuring that high performance is supported by a strong set of organizational and learning capabilities to prevent the house of cards from falling.
00:10:00 In this section, the excerpt explores the importance of a CI manager checking organizational alignment and how it has a strong impact on a factory's operational line. As a CI manager, you must check where the organization is leaning and give a counterweight to the preference in alignment with the factory's performance. Additionally, the quality of the control loop of an organization is often considered part of the capabilities of the organization, and it is essential to check how the root cause analysis teams and the performance outputs are managed. Ensuring this team has proper support from the management layer of an organization is crucial for the success of an Improvement team.
00:15:00 In this section, the speaker discusses how a Continuous Improvement (CI) manager can show improvement in the first 90 days by moving in the right direction and providing support, structure, and motivation for colleagues to work on improvement initiatives. The speaker advises managers to balance the focus on performance improvement and CI management, with corporate guidelines available to help determine a good balance. The speaker also introduces the Stars framework, which provides a way of looking at an organization's level of startup, turnaround, growth, realignment, or sustainability, and is useful for managers in the first 90 days to understand the organization's culture.
00:20:00 In this section, the speaker emphasizes the need for a different management and communication style for startups versus established businesses, and suggests discussing this framework for the Continuous Improvement program with management to determine the current phase of the program. The speaker notes that the phase of the program will dictate different approaches for CI, such as accelerating momentum or training team leaders. Additionally, the speaker encourages the new CI manager to have a discussion with direct managers and peers to determine their views and expectations for CI and balance of performance and capability building. Finally, the speaker suggests that the CI manager focus on building relationships with colleagues to gain informal leadership and clout.
00:25:00 In this section, the speaker provides advice for the first 90 days in a Continuous Improvement (CI) management role, suggesting that starting with rebalancing and checking the management of CI activities is necessary to evaluate the actual performance. They also advise making two improvements within the first 90 days to show their worth and improve the communication flow, especially on the CI management side. They assert that building a CI management role is not for short-term gain and generally doesn't need to show immediate monetary results but rather guide and support to establish trust and Goodwill.
Going back to this video to brush up. Excellent video as always!
Thanks for sharing that and glad to see you're enjoying many of my videos ☺
Hi Tom,
I really enjoyed this video. I have been a CI Engineer myself and things always tend to be quite vague for me. But I'm glad what i did was in line with most of what you outline in this video. I would also appreciate if this content were to be put into a document format, as it might reach more audience.
Thanks Li, good to hear.
You know, I'm not that much of a writer. I started writing in a couple of ways, but it's just not a format that draws me in and I don't get the energy from it to really keep it up consistently. Maybe that'll come with age and experience. The desire is there (and the respect for people who do get a book out), but for now I'd rather spend the same time I'd probably need to write one good article on making two videos 🤷♂
Come to think of it, I love audio books and videos for my own learning too. I'll read books when needed, but even for learning it's a secondary medium for me 😅
Excellent framework, thank you Tom
Thanks for telling me. I’m happy you like it and hope it will be useful for you and your peers.
Thank you for this video Tom very important info👏
Happy to hear you found value in my videos.
Do remember that this is only my view on it, and it would serve you well to check out multiple viewpoints to make your own style.
Great job Tom 👍
Any video about the latest development of Lean? 👏
Thanks for sharing that, I’m glad you like my work.
Ooph, latest developments - I sometimes put some effect or benefit of recent developments in my content (e.g. effect of labor shortage on loss priorities), but I don’t think I’ll have much to add to the ChatGPT discussion 😅
Some more discussions on digital meetings, KPI boards and using data lakes might be interesting for future videos though…
Very good video. Thanks
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it 😎
Thanks Tom - great framework by Michael D Watkins and well summed up using real life examples.
Thanks for your kind words Darren.
If you’d like me to cover some other CI topic or question, please let me know 😉
Great content, though I found I had to speed the playback to 1.5x to get through it more efficiently.😊
Thanks for sharing that feedback. Many people do, and not just with my videos, so all the more power to you if that’s how you like to consume learning content - as long as you get good value from them.
@@TomMentink new subscriber here and really have a lot of videos to catch up on from the last three years. Great content and appreciate the visual nature of your explanations. It really helps me digest your explanations and recall them later.
@@MrNubux super! And hey, at 1,5x speed you’ll only need about 48 hours of dedicated watch time to breeze through it 🤣
What are hard skills for this?
Just to recap: in this context, hard skills are the more technical/analytical skills, while soft skills cover change management, communication and the like (and know that 'soft skills' are just as hard to master as the hard skills 😉).
So hard skills important for a strong start as a CI manager are things like: able to analyse operational performance, link performance to financial numbers, performance variation analysis, calculate OEE and its constituents, make a material balance, design a performance and projects follow up meeting structure, guesstimate the operational benefit of an improvement proposal and calculate the expected financial benefit based on that; and also more basic skills like: read a P&L, able to make a 4M fishbone, do a 5 Why, able to set up a KPI tree, organise an A3 problem solving team or Kaizen Event, etc.
Thanks. I'm trying to transition from inventory management and tbh depending on the industry (food and beverage manufacturing) it sounds more like an industrial engineering role.
Wearas I see it a Business analysis role with a specialization in lean principles
Hi Tom. I hope you're doing great. Excellent video as always. Do you have any advice or tips when changing industry? I recently accepted an offer as a CI Analyst in aviation and aerospace industry. Specifically, engine MROs (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) The environment is completely different than my comfort zone (semiconductor manufacturing) My new direct manager was kind enough to give me reading materials as a primer to the industry but I'm not sure how to apply my CI experience in this completely different industry. Thanks!
Hi Geon, I had some negative experience in aviation as a Quality/Continuous Improvement Engineer. The trouble I ran into was that my manager, the QA Manager, was really more focused on compliance, than for things to be efficient. I came from automotive industry and Lean is a big focus there. Long story short, it wasn't a good match for me and I ended up leaving. My impression was that aviation is much more conservative and much more strictly regulated than other types of manufacturing. I hope your organization strikes a balance between compliance and efficiency and it turns out to be good experience for you! I did not feel any abnormal learning curve compared to going to another manufacturer per se, as every company has their terminologies. But Tom made a good point in his video, talking to people and getting to know all departments and what problems they face really helps. You should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly. All the best!
Sounds like @@lsx001 got into a change-resistant company, and having your own manager be one of the conservatives makes it even more difficult to affect change. But,...
CI is about deploying the company's resources in a more effective way to meet the company's goals - if the company (or whole industry) places great value on safety, producing tightly according to specs and triple-checking quality controls; that's what you've got to work with (at least at the start). You can find improvements in worker efficiency, how materials flow through the process, preventing failures, etc.
So to generalise that to Geon's question: check the company's strategic focus; compare what your site manager states as main concerns or points of pride/improvement with the view of managers and specialists from different departments to look for discrepancies (almost always opportunities for real improvement), secondly focus on costs drivers and what stops throughput - those are always in the main focus areas of CI.
You will want to get a good understanding of your industry and those engines in particular, even if just to be able to help out your team and contribute in discussions and brainstorming. But your CI skills are useful right off the bat: you're smart, ask the the obvious questions and drill through on any point you don't understand - having your colleagues to explain it to you forces them to really think about the logic again, and they'll often come up with the answer themselves 😃
And Li - thanks for contributing, it's much appreciated!
@@lsx001 Hi Shaoxuan, thanks so much for your perspective! They're very insightful. Fortunately enough, the company I'm going to work for have an established CI program. So hopefully that's a sign for a positive experience. I'll make sure to communicate and listen to all cross-functional teams and get to know the issues they're going through. Thanks so much!
@@lsx001 I just want to update you on my first week of work. So the good news is that CI is a completely independent department that reports directly to the site leader. Quality is completely separate and based from my initial observation, you're absolutely right about their obsession with compliance. There's a corporate push for CI activities so every site have its own CI department and we support each other apparently. I like it so far, completely different than what I'm used to. Thanks for the initial feedback!
Please I need your guidance since I'm just given the opportunity to relieve for CI Manager at the Brewery
Let me know what you’ll need guidance with and I’ll see how I can help.