The Kaizen Cycle Continues

As I stated in my last post on the barriers that block kaizen, get past them and find a way to kaizen. But sometimes, despite all our efforts like in our recent Vicksburg kaizen event, the results fall short of expectations. So what do lean thinkers do in cases like this?

We just start the kaizen cycle again…in the same area …even before the 30 day follow up.

In our kaizen event report out, the team shared a typical 30 day homework list that we limited to key items to be completed in only two weeks. We ended the homework list by adding the request to run another kaizen event with the same team to continue our kaizen efforts to reach the targeted goals.

The cool thing about this team request was why the kaizen team wanted to do another event so quickly. It was not just to hit the goal that we fell short but rather that the team had several great ideas to make improvements and didn’t have time to try them all out in the first event. They wanted more time to experiment with these ideas and make it work. This kaizen team “SEES” the opportunities and has the “PASSION” to act. So what do lean leaders do in cases like this?

We let them kaizen!

As lean leaders, one of our main responsibilities is to provide the environment and support for kaizen which is exactly what we did in this case. Our kaizen team will get another chance to experiment with their improvement ideas in two weeks. The kaizen cycle continues.