Uttana’s Lean Fundamentals course provides you with the basic Lean Manufacturing principles that you will need to get started implementing Lean processes. It covers the 7 Wastes that lead to the creation of poor processes, explores push and pull systems and how they impact your ability to respond to customer demand. This course will also teach you how to counter those 7 Wastes and methods for overhauling your processes to achieve greater efficiency. You will delve into Value-Added and Non-Value-Added techniques, and how to best reduce motion, transportation, waiting, over-processing, inventory, defects and over-production. You will also discover why production flow is so important for the layout of your facility, as well as many other fundamentals. This course is a great refresher for those looking to brush up on their Lean basics, as well as those who are new to the concepts.

This course will cover a detailed look at the building blocks of Lean, how Lean can help improve poor processes, and how the concept of flow is hindered by traditional push systems. It will also cover the 7 Wastes of Lean and how to mitigate them.

The Value of Kaizen Workshop class, also available through a Premium membership, complements the Lean Fundamentals course, by showing you how to boost morale and encourage employee engagement from the top of your organization to the bottom, as the implementation of Kaizen principles can be a period of significant disruption for your business. Employee engagement and active participation in the Kaizen process are vital for any Lean organization, and this course will show you how and why Kaizen workshops can be used to achieve this ideal.

This workshop touches on several key concepts in the Kaizen and Lean toolboxes. The “Stages of the Workshop Process” class offered by Uttana will help guide you through each step and each stage of the Workshop process. You will develop a better understanding of which tools and methodologies are introduced in the workshop process, why their order is important, and what the goal of each stage is.

Additional elements of Lean processes, including 5S and On-Piece Flow, will also be discussed, as will the importance of each on building the morale and comfort level of the people who will be spearheading the Kaizen improvements. This course will also teach you how to maintain Kaizen processes long after implementation.

The Kaizen Workshop course will include how to target improvement areas for workshops, current state analysis, a 5s exercise for workshops, creating one-piece flows, trial runs and cycle time analysis, documentation of new standards following Kaizen workshop, formulation of a 30-day action plan, and continuous improvement through the use of a Kaizen newsletter.

Included in both course are video lessons, Power Point presentations that you can use to follow along with the lessons, a glossary of important terms that will be used throughout each lesson, PDF transcripts of each video, and images from the videos that you can use to create your own materials to communicate Kaizen strategies and Lean Fundamentals to your employees at any level.