Sunday, August 26, 2007

Do your meetings start and end on time?

On our lean journey, we sometimes overlook the simple and obvious wastes. Take meetings for example. How many of your meetings start and end on time? For the past several months, I recorded the FPY (First Pass Yield) rate of meetings starting on time that I attended ending up with a poor 0% FPY rate. Not one meeting started on time and very few ended on time.

How much muda (waste) is accepted in your companies on a daily basis just because we can not start and end meetings on time. Is this problem just too complex to solve or do we just accept this waste as a by product of doing business today?

Of course, we should eliminate all unnecessary meetings as a first step. Then demand, encourage, reward, promote and expect all meetings to start on time and end on time.

1 comment:

Mike Gardner said...

It takes basic leadership ability to solve this problem. The leaders must first set the example by being on time and prepared. Next, they must make sure those whom they are responsible for understand the expectations for being on time and prepared. A disorganized meeting situation is often a symptom of poor leadership.