ISE Magazine

FEB 2017

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February 2017 | ISE Magazine 41 two-pronged approach: kaikaku for fast and significant improvements and kai- zen for slow and steady improvement. Kaikaku means "radical change" and is used in reference to a business concept that aims to make fundamental and radi- cal changes to a system or organization. It is a revolutionary approach to change, the sustainability of which is difficult to maintain without continuous im- provements, such as those accomplished through kaizens. Kaizen is a philosophy that advocates the continuous improvement of pro- cesses. It addresses systemic and organi- zational opportunities for improvement by having employees at all levels of a company work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improve- ments to the process. This creates an engine for improve- ment powered by the collective talents within the organization. Kaizen is evo- lutionary and focused on incremental improvements. Your staff members may be deter- mined to show how committed they are to embracing change and taking the company to the next level. From their perspective, only initiatives with a large impact on process performance would result in a significant return on invest- ment, in other words, something they could boast to management about. They all expected to start with a radi- cal change, or kaikaku. We recommended resisting this temp- tation and focusing on earning quick wins to gain credibility and buy-in with small, easy, low-risk and low-cost pro- cess improvements, things that can eas- ily be evaluated with small and quick experiments. In due time the team will have the opportunity to complete a radi- cal change. Use the PICK chart shown in Figure 3 to prioritize projects and ensure the company focus is on the projects with the highest benefit-to-effort ratio. The acronym PICK comes from the labels for each of the quadrants of the grid: • Possible (easy, low payoff ) • Implement (easy, high payoff ) • Challenge (hard, high payoff ) • Kill (hard, low payoff ) Ideas written on sticky notes by team members are then placed on the grid based on the payoff and difficulty level. In the interest of reducing the subjectiv- ity sometimes associated with the use of a PICK chart, we developed and use a more objective system to determine x (difficulty) and y (payoff ) coordinates for each idea. The implementation difficulty value (x coordinate) for any one idea is cal- culated using the formula: Difficulty = Duration score × Resource type score. The y coordinate, the benefit value resulting from any one idea, is calculated using the formula: Benefit = Delay score × Impact magnitude score. See Figure 4 for the scores to be used in calculating these x and y coordinates. As a company progresses through its lean transformation, team members will be at different stages in their lean jour- ney; therefore, it is important to match individuals only with projects they can do and that are important to the com- pany. Per the lean handbook, improvement needs to be organized on five levels in most, if not all, organizations on a lean journey in order of increasing scope and depth. • Individual (point kaizen): Con- ducted at the individual workstation level to reduce waste and improve workplace organization, inventory and tool location, work sequence and/or ergonomics. • Work teams (minikaizen): Un- dertake improvement projects af- fecting their collective work area of a cell or on a line segment. Examples FIGURE 3 A little help with that decision A PICK chart is a two-by-two decision matrix that can help your teams decide which projects will have the most benefit and be easiest to implement. FIGURE 4 The x's and y's have it Use these scores to calculate the difficulty (x) and payoff (y) of potential improvement ideas. For the x coordinate: Duration Score Resource type Score Short 1 Individual 1 Medium 5 Localized team 5 Long 9 Cross-functional team 9 For the y coordinate: Delay Score Impact magnitude Score Long-term 1 Localized 1 Midterm 5 Departmentwide 5 Short-term 9 Plantwide 9

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