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Sheryl Sandberg
You are viewing: Which Of The Following Is Characteristic Of The Lean Philosophy
Focused
Lean organizations are obsessed with customer value. They recognize that by establishing customer value as the number one priority for every employee, manager, and executive, other business metrics and indicators will fall in line. That’s why every decision involves an assessment of how it will impact the customer.
Aligned
In a Lean organization, every member of the team understands the mission, vision, values, and strategic priorities of the organization. This is achieved through open lines of communication between front line staff and senior leaders, and the development of a culture in which individuals are empowered to help the organization achieve those goals. This results in an army of people focused on improving the performance of the organization.
Organized
In Lean organizations there is a designated place for everything and everything is in its place. No time is wasted while looking for things. The organization looks clean and everyone is required, encouraged and motivated to keeping it organized. There are on-going reports easily assessable to everyone that provides timely feedback for individuals and groups.
Humble
Kaizen is the philosophy at the heart of Lean organization. One of the central tenants of Kaizen is that there is always room for improvement. Even when the Lean organization is doing well, leaders encourage people to find ways to drive further success. After all – continuous improvement is not something you can ever finish. A Lean organization recognizes that there are endless opportunities to improve.
Collaborative
Silos have no place in the practice of Lean organization. Cross functional collaboration and communication are necessary to tackling the biggest challenges. Lean organization that provides people with the tools they need break down silos and share knowledge and experiences across the organization drive company-wide improvement.
Empowered
Lean organizations give their employees and partners the tools they need to follow through with great customer service. Lean organization lets his managers empower the workforce by setting them up for success with clear, concise communication methods, accurate dispatch and navigation tools, skill-based assignments, workload balancing, and more.
Partnering
Effective Lean production requires the effective deployment of a set of cooperative, trust-based relationships between employees and suppliers. Instead of maintaining an arms-length contractual relationship with suppliers, Lean organizations think of suppliers as an extension of the factory or office. All the steps taken along the value stream are transparent so each participant can verify that the other organizations are behaving in accordance with the agreed principles and objectives.
Tenacious
Lean organizations do not opt for work arounds or simple answers to complex questions. They seek out and address root causes by empowering the people doing the work to speak up, identify problems, and improve them. Lean organizations are not interested in applying Band-Aids and short term fixes.
Engaged
Lean is a business process methodology that leverages the skills, input, and observations of every employee. Employees who are invested in the success of the organization and engaged in improvement are essential to Lean organizations.
Task Identity
Lean is positively related as the employee is better to see his/her contribution to the whole. In Lean organizations task and responsibilities are clear and well received by employees.
Methodological
Improvement work is most effective when intentional practices such as PDSA, A3, Catchball, and Hoshin Kanri are applied. Whatever methodology your organization has chosen to propel continuous improvement, it’s important to remember that it must be simple, habitual, and consistent across the organization. The methodology behind your improvement work is what drives long term success in a Lean organization.
Measurement
In Lean organization there are clear, proper, objective and timely measurements available for everyone to view. Any degradation is identified and addressed immediately.
Proactive
Lean organizations inspect processes, not products to prevent problems and waste before they happen. How do they do that? By engaging employees in the work. Managers don’t oversee every process, so while they might notice failures in the end product (good or service), it’s up to the people doing the work to notice ways to improve the process. Lean organizations have successfully created a culture in which employees feel safe speaking up and taking the time to make improvements along the way.
Prevention
Lean organizations seek to prevent problems and waste, rather than to inspect and fix. Lean organizations shift the emphasis from failure and appraisal to prevention. Inspecting the process, not the product, is prevention. Lean organizations use poka yoke to mistake proof process erros.
Simplicity
Lean is not simple, but simplicity pervades. In Lean organization simplicity is best achieved through the avoidance of complexity, than by “rationalization” exercises, and promotion of a culture that targets continuous improvement through the relentless elimination of waste.
Standardization
Standardization is the fundamental building block in lean philosophy, it is a basic character of lean to reduce waste in the process. Furthermore, standardization also improves flow, simplifying the management of the physical inventory, reduces mistakes and non-value adding motion. Standardization efficiently supports and maintains the organization’s lean working place and structure.
Process Oriented
In Lean organizations everyone is aware of the status of the subsequent task/step. There is a clearly visible, easy to follow path through all steps and external set-up time has been eliminated and everyone follows consistent set-up procedures.
Visual
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Visuals translate performance of every process into expected versus actual, throughout the management systems. In Lean organizations it is regular, frequent, and factual data driven. Visuals provide the opportunity to quickly spot and take action at the earliest point that performance has not met what was expected.
Documented
Standard work is documented, accessible, and continually reviewed in Lean organizations. This creates uniform processes across the organization, and allows everyone to start at the same elevated level as they improve, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. I think it’s important to point out here, though, that just because a process is documented doesn’t mean that the improvement process is over. It just means that the current best practice has been identified and shared; in a Lean organization, people are expected to use this as the starting point for future improvement.
Resilient
Resilience in Lean organizations is the ability to anticipate trouble spots and improvise when the unexpected occurs. The Lean organization must be able to identify errors for correction while at the same time innovating solutions. This is done by empowering employees to make autonomous decisions whenever possible, so that they can respond with speed and agility.
Progressive
Most organizations that successfully apply the Lean way realize that the improvement process requires the support of enabling technology. After all – there are a lot of people working together on improvement, and a limited amount of time on which to work on improvement. To ensure that they get the most done in the least amount of time, they reduce their administrative and communicative burdens by relying on continuous improvement software solutions that help move the improvement process forward with alerts, notifications, and improvement impact reporting.
Flexible
Lean organizations are moving toward more flexible workforces, in the ability to both schedule the correct number of staff for a daily and weekly workload, as well as the ability to redeploy operators throughout the day. The ability to translate production demand signals into labor requirements, and then schedule and redeploy labor while still meeting organization, union, and regulatory constraints is how leading Lean organizations are able to evolve their operations into true make-to-order production environments.
Balanced
To handle mix issues in Lean organizations, the schedule is properly leveled to minimize the impact of both inventory and set up time. In addition, the required pitch (i.e. increments of work) is regularly determined for the pace maker operation/step.
Grateful
In order for Lean culture to take hold, employees must feel valued and recognized for their contributions to improvement. Smart leaders realize this and broadcast employee successes at every opportunity.
Questioning
Lean organization encourages a questioning culture. Ask why several times to try to get to the root cause. Encourage everyone to question. “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”, said Stephen Covey.
Humility
The more you strive for Lean, the more you realize how little you know, and how much there is yet to learn. Learning begins with humility in the Lean organizations.
Trust
Lean organizations build confidence in your promises and commitments. Building trust takes time.
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Category: WHICH
