The concept of collaborative leadership seems foreign to some professionals new to a leadership role. Most newly anointed leaders anticipate an environment where they are streaming orders down the line and their staff are jumping into action. Things are getting done as long as they seem to be in control, barking orders and expecting complete subordination of their authority.  It is an idealistic world that truly only can be successful in the most limited environments or in times of life-or-death situations. The practice of collaborative leadership can be crucial in times of uncertainty or turbulence, but is also a driving element in the lean manufacturing environment. Simply put, it creates a collaborative environment where people can unite with purpose, with clear vision and a solid set of values.

Leaders practicing in an environment of collaborative leadership have a purpose and vision, with character and values that are unwavering.  These elements blend together and create passion, but that passion must begin with the leader. Others will not follow a leader that lacks passion, simply because they lead by example. This element of passion in leadership creates the spark that drives others to initiate actions independently and step up to the challenge.They are will to take on ambitious responsibilities and accept the risks associated without  fear.

The elements of purpose, character and values brings a leader forward in the work environment. One of the hardest lessons learned in that environment is that they are really never in control. It is understood that people comply with authority when the leader is present. The real key to success is what they do in the absence of authority. Collaborative leadership principles demand leaders that can lead without the safety net of a title, position or authority of a superior. This doesn’t mean that you cut deals or accept substandard performance. It simply means that your drive, passion and commitment inspire others to follow your lead. 

Finally, collaborative leadership focuses on developing people and other leaders at all levels. It instills the concept that everyone is a leader.  Everyone has voice that is respected and that they are expected to take the responsibility for their actions. This means that mistakes are no longer there to be documented and considered as punishable infractions. They become opportunities for learning and development. You must take your people outside of their comfort zones and encourage them to succeed.

There are many elements involved in collaborative leadership. They require a leader to give up their authoritative tendencies, get out of their office and join the work environment they are responsible for. It requires character, passion and the establishment of trust. It is truly the foundation of a successful team and the collaborative process. It is all about the people. 

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Eliminating Waste in Customer Service

Waste is a major problem in many industries, and it can pop up in some surprising places from time to time. And if you’re not prepared to deal with it adequately, it can be very damaging to your company’s operations in the long run. Thankfully, we have various methodologies nowadays that have been specifically designed to address the problem of waste.

But implementing those in your organization is not a straightforward process, and you’ll have to pay attention to the small details along the way. Otherwise, you risk generating even more waste in the long run, as paradoxical as it might sound.

What Is Waste?

First things first though what exactly is waste in the context of a company’s work? In general terms, it’s anything that does not contribute to the positive performance of the system. Waste is more than just a physical definition. An employee taking too long to walk to their workstation is a basic example of waste.

And with customer support, it’s not hard to find such problems all over the place if you just start looking. If you’ve never paid attention to streamlining the operation of your support centers, you likely have a lot of work ahead of you.

Getting to the Root Cause of Each Problem

Every source of waste can be traced back to some specific issue in your organization. The problem is that sometimes the cause of your problem is not close to the results that it produces. It may even be in a completely different domain. With that in mind, you have to develop a good methodology for tracing the root causes of problems in your organization and make sure that it’s applied properly whenever something comes up in your operations.

It will take a while to develop the right mindset for that, but it will be extremely beneficial in the long run as far as the overall performance of your company and its support sector are concerned.

Preventing Reoccurrence

Solving a problem once is one thing, but preventing it from ever coming back is a different story and requires a much more calculated, careful approach. If you want to prevent the reoccurrence of issues related to waste, that’s even more complicated in most cases. You have to constantly analyze the situation and collect enough data about the way things are working at the moment.

And whenever you notice some deviation from the norm, don’t delay the investigation into that issue. The more you wait, the more serious the problem is going to become behind the scenes, and it might end up affecting your business in some very unpleasant ways later on. When it comes to customer support, this can happen very easily.

Ensuring Everyone Is on the Same Page

Sometimes your employees will need a little extra push to ensure that they’re properly motivated to help you in your efforts to reduce waste. Not everyone understands the importance of doing this by default, so you might have to reorganize things a little bit to make the situation more appropriate for this kind of mindset.

If you have to, be strict punish people for not complying with your new requirements and track their progress individually. It might seem harsh at first, but sometimes it’s the only way to ensure that there are no compliance issues in your organization.

Evaluating Customer Satisfaction

Last but not least, you’ll want to make sure that all of this effort is actually producing any viable results. To this end, make sure that you pay attention to your customer evaluation surveys and analyze the data coming in from them in as much detail as you can. Sometimes they can reveal some surprising insights into the way your company works as a whole, but in other cases, you’ll need to do some extra digging to make sense of the information presented to you.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to individual customers with your concerns in this regard as well. People are often more than happy to talk about problems they might be having with your organization, especially when it comes to customer support. And the more you talk to them on an individual level, the more positive their impressions of your company are going to be in the long run.

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Understanding lean management on a fundamental level starts by learning its core principles, and learning how to comply with them in your own work. There are various ways to deepen your understanding on the subject, but it’s something you have to keep informing yourself about on a regular basis.

That’s because lean and lean management is a constantly evolving field, and it’s one where you can’t really rely on your previously acquired skills to remain valid forever. You have to keep pushing yourself, and this requires persistence and motivation. If you want to get started with lean as fast as possible, you should take a look at some of the fundamental underlying principles, and ensure that you understand them in detail.

Waste Reduction

Identifying waste and removing it from the workflow is a critical element to any lean methodology. It’s not as easy as it looks though. Figuring out where waste is generated is about more than just crunching some numbers to see if your company is moving in the right direction. You have to actively question points that might impact the organization’s overall capacity to produce useful results, and address those specifically.

It can be very difficult to identify waste correctly in some environments too. This might sometimes require additional expertise, and the outlook of someone who has seen enough problems of this type in their past. Things can get even more complicated when considering the fact that waste can sometimes be inherently tied to some of the production going on at the facility in the first place.

Flow

Flow is inherently tied to waste one of the main problems that lean philosophies are commonly trying to address. Flow is basically defined as the organization’s momentum in moving forward, and its ability to create value without any interruptions or slowdowns in the process. Flow can be extremely important to many organizations, especially those that constantly rely on a steady stream of income in order to do their work.

Pull

Flow has to be guaranteed in some way and that’s where pull comes in. the concept of pull is closely tied to creating work that leads flow behind it. In other words, leaders should avoid certain actions that could lead to the reduction of flow in the organization, which in turn means that they need to focus on improving its pull.

This can be done in various ways. Organizing work ahead of time to ensure that you don’t do anything more than what’s necessary to drive progress forward is a good example. Addressing issues with the company’s pull is one of the top priorities of most lean managers, and there’s a good reason so much of their work is tied to that specifically.

Striving for Perfection

As a lean manager, perfection should be your ultimate goal in every aspect of your work. This might seem obvious, but it goes beyond simply delivering good results. You have to go out of your way to ensure that you’re meeting every possible criteria in your industry and in your organization specifically. What’s more, you have to constantly adjust those goals and keep striving for perfection in ways that did not exist before.

This can only happen by aligning your work with constant research, about your field in particular and about lean philosophies as a whole. You have to always be on the lookout for ways to improve your production capabilities and make sure that everything you do is aligned with the idea of achieving perfection in the long run.

Improving Value

Much like waste, value can be a bit difficult to define, especially in some industries. But improving the value delivered by your organization in its work is one of the most crucial points of developing that company in an appropriate manner. You have to identify the root elements that define the value of your work and then focus on improving those as much as possible.

Conclusion

There’s more to lean management than that much more in fact. There’s a good reason why lean specialists are highly sought after and compensated so well. The field is constantly evolving, and it requires a determined, educated approach of the kind that only the best can provide. And if you’re a leader who cares about the future of your organization, it’s important to integrate those principles into its work early on.

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How to Get Started with an Eco-Friendly Manufacturing System

Looking to get started with optimizing your manufacturing system to treat the environment better? There are many ways to approach that, and some will be more viable for your particular corner of the industry. It’s important to align your practices not only with nature, but also with current trends on the market. This will provide your company with the long-term stability that it needs in order to stay relevant in your market, and also to be a sustainable business that minimizes its impact on the environment.

The Current State of the Market

More and more companies are starting to explore the idea of green manufacturing. One quick look around the market is enough to prove that point. And while it might seem like there’s still time to join that trend, there really isn’t. It’s a wave that’s taking over the world by storm, and only those who try to integrate green manufacturing in their processes early on are going to stand a chance later.

Plus, consumers are starting to become much more conscious about their own impact on the environment. And that’s something you should be striving to align with as well, even if just for the better exposure.

How to Plan Efficiently

You need a planned approach. This is a long-term process that will take some time to implement fully, and you’ll have to be patient through the whole ordeal. Not only that, but you must measure your progress along the way to ensure that you’re meeting your initial planned criteria.

It all comes down to setting up an effective plan in the first place. You should ideally be aiming for a specific duration for the whole implementation, and you should have some milestones along the way that you’re aiming to meet. It’s not critical if you overshoot on some of them the important thing is to have a plan and attempt to follow it.

Reducing Eco Waste Where It Matters

Waste in production is one of the biggest contributors to environmental harm. Even if you’re not literally dumping your garbage in rivers, you might still be contributing a lot to harming the world around you without even realizing it. Even using more resources than you should can have a pretty big impact over a long enough period of time. And that’s something that many companies are guilty of, whether they realize it or not.

Optimizing your processes should therefore be one of your main priorities if you want to see long-term success in your green approach. With some research, you should be able to identify multiple points of action where you could potentially do something to ensure that your company is not so wasteful.

Consulting the Experts

Don’t be afraid to reach out either. This is a common mistake that we unfortunately still see in many businesses around the world. And the more experienced you are, the more likely you will be to trust your own instincts and be too proud to ask for help. And unsurprisingly, this is the one factor that ruins many companies in the long run. Arrogance can permeate in many aspects of your business, and it can be one of the fastest roads to ruin.

A Sustainable Approach

Sustainability is a popular word these days, and for a good reason. Many business owners have started to realize the positive connection between a sustainable model and long-term success. And as some companies on the market attempt to integrate this knowledge into their work, those who don’t are inevitably going to get left behind.

You have the power to decide which side of the fence you’re going to find yourself a few years from now, and making the necessary changes starts right now.

Conclusion

Getting started with making your manufacturing processes more environmentally friendly is the most difficult step in the whole ordeal. After that, pieces will start falling into place one by one, and you’re going to find it easier and easier to keep up with what you’re doing. Make sure to get help along the way whenever you realize that you need it though because refusing to do so can be one of the main factors that will contribute to your eventual downfall. And it happens to more companies than you might expect.

If you’d like to learn more about Lean Six Sigma and the Environment, check out this FREE online course >>>

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Is it Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma? What is Lean then? These can be some of the most confusing questions that can be asked when trying to understand quality processes. Understanding the differences and similarities are crucial to clarity.  Check out this informative video that defines what is really Lean Six Sigma.

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Six Sigma has come a long way since it was first conceptualized. It has been constantly evolving and is likely to grow more in the coming years. The methodology provides a vast playground for those keen to transform their business workflows and make the best of use of the opportunities available to their business.

Those interested in the field should keep watching the space for exciting new developments, as Six Sigma holds the promise of limitless opportunities to those who are keen enough to identify and utilize them.

Six Sigma and the Future

Six Sigma is based on the concept of continuous improvement. This technique promises increased sales, lower costs, and greater customer satisfaction levels. The methodology is centered around measurable improvement in quality and there is no better solution to achieve these standards.

The future of Six Sigma is likely to involve the following key trends:

• Use of Lean with Six Sigma: The use of lean techniques with Six Sigma has a proven greater impact on long-term success since, in addition to the minimization of variance, the tools also help remove waste processes from the cycle. The future is likely to see the continued use of Lean techniques so as to enhance quality to a much greater extent than otherwise possible. This, in turn, would lead to greater customer satisfaction and ultimately to the realization of business objectives. It is important to realize that each business and situation is completely different from the other and the approach to quality control should be customized and chosen accordingly.
• Utilization of Customer Data: Mining business and customer data will assume prime importance in the future. Even today, businesses are increasingly becoming aware of the huge potential of large datasets and a comprehensive data analysis.
• Data-driven and Fact-based Decision-Making: It is important to emphasize the need for a decision-making approach that is data-driven and fact-based since this is the essence of the Six Sigma strategy. Dubbing timely project completion as an improvement is a trend on the verge of extinction in the complex business environments of today.
• Process Size: Process improvement is maximal with three to six-month projects that follow the DMAIC strategy. This is expected to continue into the future.
• Valid Certifications: As Six Sigma is widely being used by businesses in all sectors, it will also be important for users to be wary of worthless certifications that have no real benefits.
• Powerful Analytical Tools: The use of lean and graphical analysis tools will assume even more importance in the near future. Businesses should also afford equal importance to techniques such as regression analysis and DOE (design of experiments)
• Use of Modern Technology: The future will see increased use of modern technologies, including sophisticated computers in the field of Six Sigma. Modern technology makes it easier than ever before to collect and analyze data at much faster rates. Furthermore, it is also becoming easier to observe a large number of processes with high accuracy. The cumulative effect is that human errors are reduced and lower waste is generated.
• Staying Away From Wrong Lean Trends: Businesses must stay away from shortcut approaches and the desire for instant results. Continuous improvement is a difficult process, for, if it were easy, everyone would adopt the techniques with little effort.
• Team Skills: The future will also see an increased emphasis on interpersonal and team skills. Businesses will seek the expertise of professional LSS Green Belts and Black Belts in implementing company strategy and leading the process improvement programs.
• Operational Excellence with LSS: Businesses will focus more on OpEx programs and frameworks. Such initiatives would help lead quality and process improvement efforts within the company, resulting in a robust and diverse process improvement program.

Future Trends for Performance Excellence

The future will see performance excellence initiatives take the front seat in businesses. Experts envision that the detection of defects will be easier in the future. Since this is one of the main focus areas of the Six Sigma approach, there will likely be a lot of developments in this area.

Sustainable development will be the central topic for most companies, and is expected to bring a paradigm shift.

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The elimination of waste in processes is one of the most effective ways to increase the profitability of any business. Processes either add value or waste to the production of a good or service. There are seven wastes or ‘muda,’ and the tool was first developed by Taiichi Ohno and make up the core of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Take some time and learn more about the seven wastes, lean and the TPS.

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The operating room (OR) is a resource intensive and costly unit in every hospital. Finding ways to maximize their efficiency is crucial to ensuring the financial viability of the organization. As the healthcare environment becomes more and more competitive, increasing OR productivity becomes a high priority. The trick is to find the balance between efficiency and patient care, safety and clinical outcomes. More and more, healthcare professionals look to Lean Six Sigma methodologies to find the balances. Watch this video and learn more from this educational video.

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The concept of the seven deadly wastes’ is one of the cornerstones of the lean methodology, and forms a part of a vital toolkit which every professional should be familiar with. If you are able to identify the impact that the seven wastes have on your workplace, then you can start to take the initial steps toward working more efficiently and productively.

Unfortunately one of the hangovers from lean’s inception in the manufacturing industry is that a large number of lean tools are focused on wastes within factories, making it challenging to adapt to non-manufacturing settings. This article seeks to change this viewpoint, so that education professionals can take a fresh look at how the methodology applies to them and their institutions.

1. Defects / Rework

In the same way that there are defective products in manufacturing, defects in education can take the form of systems that fail to transmit information as required, resulting in loss of time, communication and human energy. Examples include inability of institutions to complete admissions due to missing or incorrect student information, or failure to inform staff of new or recently changed policies in good time, leading to non-compliance.

2. Overproduction

More often than not, this is an issue that tends to slip under the radar in service industries like education. However, overproduction is a unique category of waste in the sense that it inevitably gives rise to other forms of waste if it is not checked. Examples of overproduction include having all the students in an institution enrolling concurrently, resulting in long queues, delays and errors, or expecting all members of faculty to adhere to standard teaching, research and service workload expectations, whether the extra work is required from everyone or not.

3. Waiting

This is idle time within a process before moving to the next step, and is generally caused by shortages in inventory or poor balancing of work across shifts and among employees. Some examples of this type of waste are: waiting for students to submit assignments or attend lectures, awaiting approval for critical decisions or waiting for people so that a meeting can begin.

4. Overprocessing

This is the performance of activities which provide no value to the service from the point of view of the students. It is manipulation of the service offered by an educational institution and its staff to levels beyond what students expect and are willing to pay for. For instance, it makes little sense and adds no value for handouts or notes to be packaged in envelopes that students will immediately discard.

5. Transportation

This involves the unnecessary movement of people or materials from one point to another. While some types of movement may be necessary for the provision of a service, they may not necessarily be of concern to the customer. Examples include faculty having to carry coursework home to grade it, or students ferrying assignments home on removable media and then back to class again every day.

6. Inventory

Inventory waste occurs when more supplies are ordered than are actually necessary, resulting in a glut, or when improper tracking of inventory causes shortages of essential supplies. For instance, a school library that has a limited number of a highly in-demand book will mean that students will struggle to complete their assignments. Another form of inventory waste is printing of new prospectuses every year and discarding those from the previous year, despite both having similar information.

7. Underutilized Employees

Having staff with good ideas is an invaluable resource, so the worst thing that leaders in educational institutions can do is to ignore them completely. The people actually working with the customers and processes directly are in a good position to identify areas where things go wrong and can suggest solutions.

Conclusion

Many people still think of lean and business improvement as they relate to manufacturing, especially since the concepts were first introduced by companies like General Electric, Motorola and Toyota. However, businesses and organizations in the service sector, including in education, are starting to consider how process improvement can transform how much value they offer to the customer.

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Standard work is a common practice used by many who apply lean and Six Sigma into their workflow, and it has many benefits that can be realized by pretty much every organization out there. It’s important to study the implications of standard work and consider its integration into your own company’s workflow if you want to remain as efficient as possible, as there are many ways that it can improve the overall capacity of the organization.

1. Better quality across the board

The most obvious positive effect of standard work is that it can lead to an improvement in the work quality in pretty much every aspect. It becomes easier to ensure that things match specifications correctly, and workers additionally know what results they should expect at every step of the process. That alone can be a huge benefit when it comes to controlling the final quality. Not only that, but standard work can also allow an organization to detect problems with its production much more efficiently, giving it an even greater degree of control over the final production quality.

2. Efficient reduction of waste

Waste reduction is one of the most important topics in many modern organizations, as various companies are now dealing with significant issues with waste in their production flow. By following standardized work principles, waste can be reduced to an absolute minimum, as it will be eliminated in the initial planning stages before it even reaches any production point. This shifts the responsibility of waste elimination to designers rather than producers, which can often work out much better.

3. Defects are easy to identify and address

When the entire workflow is broken down into standardized pieces, it gets much easier to figure out when something has gone wrong, and what exactly it may be. Error detection is really simple in a typical standard work process if everything has been implemented correctly, and correcting the error afterwards is just a matter of following the right procedure. This can provide the organization with a much better degree of flexibility when it comes to resolving problems in the production line, while also making it more capable to scale up without worrying about any reduction in quality.

4. Easier budget planning

When you have a good idea of how much exactly every part of the process is expected to cost, this can give you much more freedom in planning the company’s budget and its next moves on the market. Of course, there will always be some deviations from the norm, especially when dealing with faulty equipment and other production issues, but for the most part, the company can expect to stabilize around a certain cost point for most of its projects. It’s also much easier to make changes to that budget later on when you treat the whole budget like a puzzle, with perfectly fitting and aligned pieces.

5. Streamlined employee training

Bringing new people into the workforce is always a challenging ordeal for every organization, especially those that involve more complex procedures in their work. It’s not rare for companies to spend huge amounts of resources on training alone, and that can be quite the drain on their budget in the long run. Standard work allows an organization to integrate everyone into its work as easily as possible, without any hassle or hiccups along the way. When done right, it may even be possible to execute this with almost no human intervention required along the way, making the process for bringing new employees on board a very streamlined and efficient one. That can, in turn, make the company much more flexible in who it hires and how often that happens.

Conclusion

Standard work can bring a huge number of benefits to the table for any organization that implements it correctly, and it doesn’t take too long to get started with the process either. It’s something every responsible leader should look into as early as possible in the growth of their company, as adopting this methodology in the long run can be one of the easiest ways to reduce stress and mistakes across the organization as a whole.

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