By using Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) as your personal operating system you will learn.
The essence of Lean is learning – learning that is closely linked with action.
At the end of projects, many teams reflect with a “lessons learned” practice. People come together to think back on what could have gone better, new things they discovered along the way, and what went well. However, doing “lessons learned” at the end of the project misses the many cumulative opportunities to make the project better every day.
Start each day with the PDCA mindset. Choose to make today different from yesterday.
Reviewing processes that you carry out daily to look for areas where improvements can be made is not something that has to be confined to the workplace.
Once you get into the PDCA mindset, you will start to see opportunities everywhere you look.
At home in my kitchen there is a rail where all the kitchen utensils and dish cloths are hanging so that all of these items are easy to get to when required.
Each item is on an S-hook that hangs over the rail.
I thought this was a great idea to keep the items that are used most often available without having to open drawers etc. to pick them up.
Unfortunately, the design of the S-hooks meant that most times an item was picked up, its hook would become dislodged from the rail and fall onto the countertop below.
After assessing the problem and seeing that the hooks were not long enough to adjust them by bending to hold them onto the rail, I had to look for an alternative.
New hooks were found with a ring at the top.
Once these were fitted, the problem of falling hooks was eliminated.
The same as yesterday isn’t good enough – Shigeo Shingo
Left: Valve tags along with simple storage container. Right: Container storage in numerical sequence.
Recently the team on the Janssen pharmaceutical project in Cork decided they could improve on the storage of all the valve tags required for the project.
Anyone who has ever been involved with trying to locate a particular valve tag on a process project will understand how time consuming this can be if no thought has been put into the storage initially.
The team here assessed the task and came up with the solution that the best way was to break it down into smaller groups of tags to make storage simpler.
It was decided that the tags from each P&ID would be the best way to do this.
An Excel matrix was generated listing all of the tags by P&ID and assigning a simple identifying number to each.
A series of plastic containers were bought and numbered to match the matrix and these were stored numerically, making it easy for anyone to find a valve tag quickly and simply.
The Janssen team again wanted to improve on previous systems where white boards had been used for displaying information on workpacks and where daily updates are required.
The solution here was to use a magnetic whiteboard with magnetic strips for vertical markings (able to move and re-use easily) and adhesive gridding tape for horizontal markings (removable without leaving any residue) to give flexibility.
Magnetic marker holders and duster helped to keep all required tools to hand.
**Details available on request**
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