As you may have noticed, my posts over the last 20 days have been as non-existent as a passionate Hillary supporter at an Obama fundraiser in June. Occasionally I have periods like this when my kaizen travel calendar gets full and I fail to make the time to post. I had every intention of posting after the kaizen events in the evenings but the kaizen events are so intensive, so demanding and so time consuming that I have little time or energy left late at night. Over the past several weeks, we have completed three great kaizen events in three different plants, trained hundreds of our associates on our “My CI” program in two plants (more on that in upcoming posts), and I even took some time off to take my family on vacation to Washington, DC, and coastal Virginia. My kids (age 7 and 11) got to experience a bit of American history in DC but we did not restrict all our vacation time just on museums and monuments. We certainly took time for some outdoor adventure by hiking at Great Falls National Park, exploring Chincoteague Island to see the wild ponies and kayaking in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It was their first kayak experience and they loved it. I loved it, too! Even though I love kaizen activities, we must never forget how important it is to spend time with our families. Just a note, the video clip is from beautiful Great Falls and not on our kayak adventure. Good thing, huh?
4 comments:
Very nice. Here are some photos from my visit to Great Falls
Why distinguish between "kaizen" and vacation? If the vacation improved something, it qualified.
Why the total emphasis on kaizen "events?" Can you sustain gains through this approach? What about developing and establishing systems to sustain the transformation? I'm curious about all forms of lean adoption.
Thanks John. Your pictures of Great Falls are outstanding! Most of the trails are on the easy side however we did try out "Swamp Trail" which was more a trail than a groomed walkway.
To anonymous, thanks for your comments. The distinction between my kaizen activites and my family vacation were only to list reasons for my lack of posting the past few week. Otherwise, they had nothing in common. Yes, you can sustain gains by only conducting kaizen events however that is an extremely one sided approach to continuous improvment that I do not recommend.
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