How to extract value from Training within Industry & Lean programs

Extracting the value from Lean training or transformation program, including Training within Industry skills, requires more than just training. If we want to achieve acceleration of process improvement - in fact any successful organisational change - requires a change in the way we lead and manage others.

Companies that are doing a good job in introducing and using Training within Industry, Lean skills or Six Sigma skills can expect tremendous benefits. Not all are successful, however. Management skills and habits are one of the primary success factors. Companies with active management involvement tend to do much better. To make our people grow, we ourselves need to grow. Business results are determined by our skill in leading, developing and supporting our people and teams.

Critical manager skills for a successful Lean transformation include the ability to set clear direction, to train, coach, challenge and motivate people, and the ability to detect and correct process and systems problems quickly and sustainably. Managers also need to understand enough about the technical aspects of Lean, Training within Industry and Six Sigma to know what is possible and challenge their people. Attending the 10 hour foundation classes of Training within Industry or Lean Six Sigma with their supervisors and operators, should be a must for any executive serious about extracting a good return on the training investment.

Skills grow and deliver results when they are practised often enough. Changing our management habits is a critical element of successful transformations. Managers are the tip of the spear when it comes to driving rapid, effective change. What they say or don’t say, what they do or don’t do, what they do or don’t pay attention to matters - a lot! Company culture is the culture of its managers. Therefore, one of the best investments managers can do is in themselves: our Leader Standard Work training and Toyota Kata training are an excellent starting point.

Supervisor Standard Work training develops your front-line leaders’ capability in accelerating improvement & stabilisation of their processes. By re-balancing daily tasks, problem solving and people development, they run today’s production more effectively whilst building processes & people that make ‘tomorrow better than today’.

Skills developed: effective daily production management & problem solving

Delivery: 5 class-room sessions, one 2-hour session per day (one week)

Practice: developing and testing supervisor standard work during training week

Return on investment: rapid, through immediate application in daily work

The Supervisor Standard Work training program enables organisations to accelerate the transition of their supervisors & team leaders from traditional supervision, characterised by micro-management of shop-floor activities and frequent fire-fighting, to high-performance management, driven by continuous focus on process stability and improvement.

In recent years the role of the supervisor has changed dramatically. They must acquire new leadership skills and improvement capabilities to succeed in today’s environment. They must fit new improvement, training and coaching tasks into their already crammed work schedules. Many supervisors struggle with this.

What participants will be able to do…

• improve time management: decide what to focus on and when without neglecting mission-critical activities

• balance activities to deliver progress: running production, stabilising & improving processes, developing team capabilities

• develop standard work instruction for critical tasks

• visualise & drive process stabilisation

• use visual tools to trigger problem solving when & where it is needed

• effective problem solving at levels 1 (containment) & 2 (countermeasure)

Through Supervisor Standard Work, organisations can ensure

• all activities required to manage production & ensure improvement are carried out correctly and reliably

• supervisors & team leaders transition to ‘process focus’ by ‘doing it’

• performing the supervisors’ enhanced role becomes easier & less mentally exhausting

• the capabilities developed through leadership & improvement skills training get locked in & deliver operating results faster

• the pace of Operations Excellence and Lean transformation accelerates

Many organisations struggle to make the idea of daily, continuous improvement a reality. Improvement projects are in the hands of dedicated specialists, target big-step improvement and take a long time to complete. Front line employees & their supervisors are hard to get on board. Improvement is slow. To get to daily improvement, we need to change people’s routines. Toyota Kata converts managers into true leaders of rapid improvement.

Skill developed: Coaching rapid continuous improvement

Delivery: 5 class-room sessions, 2 hours per day (one week)

Practice: rapid experiments & coaching cycles whilst improving performance in the pilot line

Return on Investment: Toyota Kata provides rapid payback by accelerating the pace of improvement in the pilot line

Daily continuous improvement eludes most businesses. Toyota Kata develops the improvement & leadership skills that enable fast-paced, daily improvement. Kata (a term borrowed from martial arts) are practice routines that develop skills to the point that they become automatic, sub-conscious & easy. 

Empowering the people at the front-line (who know more about the real problems affecting quality and productivity than anyone else) to solve them, promises huge benefits. Proper empowerment requires direction, skill and support. Providing these is one of the critical management skills, developed by Toyota Kata training.

What Toyata Kata graduates will be able to do:

• Run fast-paced experiments to close performance gaps

• Grow the problem-solving skills of supervisors & their teams

• Align team & improvement priorities with operations strategy 

• Accelerate progress towards strategic objectives

• Coach fast-paced improvement

• Engage your people in rapid, daily improvement (Kaizen)

Toyota Kata enables organisations to:

• Quickly engage their workforce in continuous improvement

• Grow improvement capability & capacity (more people, more often, with real skills)

• Accelerate process stabilisation & operations excellence efforts

• Deploy operations strategy faster and achieve targets much earlier

• Energise and empower supervisors and their teams