Our Action Research involves working with organisations at different stages of their lean journey but we are keen to work with pioneers to develop new ways of defining value from the customer’s perspective - in healthcare, mobility and other service sectors ... more ...
Working with you ...
If you are interested in training, mentoring or need help with your lean transformation / business model - or would just like us to make a presentation to senior management please send us an email outlining your situation and the problem you want us to help solve – to info@leanuk.org.
In-house workshops and training
Our workshops are best done in-house addressing a real problem so participants go through the experience of putting lean thinking into practice for themselves. This is because we have learnt that the only lean improvements that stick are those done by the organisation itself. This experience is critical in breaking old ways of thinking and working, in being able to sustain improvements to the flow of work and in creating examples for the rest of the organisation to learn from. We have a wide range of workshops and experts from around the world we can draw on to address different situations. Our main focus is not on training how to use lean tools but in how to create the conditions to begin using lean, how to design a lean value stream and how managers and leaders can prioritize lean actions and manage lean processes.
We began doing breakthrough workshops in sectors where managers and staff found it hard to see how lean could help their situations, for instance in industries making large numbers of products in big batches through common production equipment. Here the challenge is to show that as a few products account for most of the production volume it is quite possible to flow these products through the factory and produce them more frequently in line with demand rather than to inaccurate forecasts. The logic is explained in the workbook Breaking Through to Flow. The five day breakthrough workshops have been very successful in unblocking mental models and starting lean transformations in many different industries.
The focus of our value stream design workshops is to help employees create a pilot value stream in their organisation. In a five day workshop it is possible to:
- diagnose the business problem or gap to be closed
- define the work or products to focus on
- lean to see the current process by walking and then mapping the process
- learn and simulate the principles of value stream design
- learn how to create a future state for the value stream
- develop and A3 plan of action for the next several months
- start immediate improvements during the workshop
This is then followed up by 30 and 60 day reviews of progress and problems.
We have recently begun two other workshops for managers leading lean transformations – one on the principles and practices of lean management and lean leadership and another on A3 planning and problem solving. These vary in length and are tailored to both the level of management involved and the latter not only teaches how to make an A3 plan but also how to develop subordinates using the A3 problem solving process.
Mentoring and independent advice
We often get asked by senior managers to take an independent look at a particular situation or a lean transformation and suggest the appropriate next steps. Our rule is that we need to do a walk through the Gemba and talk to key managers before we are ready to give a talk on the next steps with lean. This can range from how to get started with lean, to helping to launch a lean transformation, to reinvigorating lean transformations that have got stuck or which have failed so far to go beyond operations. Our advice is as independent as possible because our main objective is to help organisations to create more successful examples of lean to encourage others, rather than sell lots of consulting days implementing a standard consulting product.
Designing Lean Transformations
Recently we have been asked to help design and support lean transformations in several organisations. Our interest in getting involved in these longer term projects is to learn how an organisation can most effectively develop their own lean transformations. This includes diagnosing the business problems or gaps in performance to be closed, framing an A3 plan of action for the organisation, developing the lean knowledge of top managers, initiating several value stream pilot projects, developing a cadre of lean line managers to build on these pilot projects, and creating internal lean experts to support them.
We can only work with a few organisations at a time on these longer term projects although we can draw on a network of lean experts from around the world. We are particularly interested in working with organisations in very diverse industries and at different stages of lean in order to be able to extract the generic lessons to be learnt from these different transformations. In some cases, but not all, these longer term projects have grown out of several in-house workshops we have done in different parts of the organisation or to unblock different stages of their lean transformations.
Developing new lean business models
One of the most significant results of lean is that it opens up new business models or new ways of delivering value to customers that was previously impossible or too expensive. We outlined new ways of understanding how consumers use products and services to solve problems in managing their households in Lean Solutions. We are always looking for organisations that are interested in exploring how they might rethink what they offer and how to their consumers.
How to design lean 
How to lean 
How to 
How to create lean end-to-end 
How to 
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