If you are involved in an organization that has implemented the Lean Management System, you already have a lot going for you. Making the change to Lean requires commitment, endurance and an eye for details. You will have had to:

• Analyze major and minor elements of operation
• Removed, reorganized and repurposed many things that haven’t changed in years
• Developed new and more efficient procedures for just about everything

And, most importantly, convinced your workforce to join in and help, knowing that many did not see what was wrong with the way things were.

Invisible Problems:

For many people, the advantages of Lean may not be apparent at first. The obsessive war against waste, the constant organizing, cleaning and labeling, the tags and notice boards and special procedures that no one ever had to worry about before.

Dealing with people who can’t see the problems that Lean was created to fix can be a challenge. That is where training comes in.

Training:

The Kaizen Training principle of continuous improvement is not easy to make happen. It requires just as much commitment as the original Lean initiative, but without the advantage of obvious problems to spur efforts on.

Many of the issues that plagued your organization before Lean have been, at least in part, dealt with. This makes it hard for your workforce to understand your constant focus on getting Lean and staying Lean. Aren’t we Lean enough already?

You know that the answer to that question will always be NO, but convincing others is the tricky part.

Kaizen Events:

Lean has a mechanism that is helpful in these cases called Kaizen Events. Training packages are available that will give you the details on how to:

• Create a Lean Committee, the body who initiates and organizes the event
• Select the target to be improved by the next Lean initiative
• Organize and run the event
• Evaluate its effectiveness

A Kaizen event is a large scale function designed to include as much of the management and workforce as possible. During the event, the Lean committee will try to:

• Communicate to the participants the results of the most recent Lean initiative
• Introduce the next area to be tackled by Lean methodology and communicate the anticipated benefits resulting from the change
• Help get the workforce on board with the new ideas

• Reinforce Lean principles and skill sets.

Kaizen Workshop:

A Kaizen training workshop is a smaller version of a Kaizen event. It is usually shorter and more focused, involving a smaller segment of the workforce. And while it is sometimes used to alert the staff of upcoming changes in systems and procedures, its primary purposes to:

• Get feedback from the workforce on their impression of the Lean changes to date
• To help introduce and reinforce Lean concepts and skills that may have gone rusty over time
• To get feedback from the workforce regarding problems, deficiencies, suggestions and ideas for where Lean should be applied next.

Kaizen Workshop Training packages are available with details on how to plan and execute a successful Kaizen workshop.

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