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Mobilizing Our Ingenuity Through Good Management.

In this video, Mike Rother shares valuable insights into the importance of ‘structured’ change methodology, called Kata.

At Lean Advisors, we believe Kata is the next major critical concept organizations need to grasp in order to create a sustainable transformation. Mike has uncovered, through his research with U of Michigan another important piece of the puzzle necessary for success and taking your team to the next level of competitiveness

Message from Larry Cote, President, Lean Advisors Inc.

I recently came across this video of Mike Rother who spoke at the Lean Summit in 2012. I had the privilege to work with Mike back when Lean was just gaining interest in the mid 90s.

At that time, much of Mike’s research and efforts were focused on Toyota and the primary transformational tool known as Value Stream Mapping (VSM).

We wanted to share this with our online community.

Lean Summit 2012 – Mike Rother – Toyota Kata

Online Certification Available for Healthcare Organizations

Lean Advisors Online, is pleased to announce that Quality Healthcare Network (QHN.CA) now endorses their industry leading Online Yellow and Green Belt Certification Courses for Healthcare Organizations worldwide.

Developed in partnership with Healthcare Organizations, the Ministry, and our e-learning partner Automated Learning, the Online Yellow and Green Belt Certification courses are tailored specifically for Healthcare organizations who are looking for a cost effective solution and who desire the flexibility to learn and earn their designation online.

Using their interactive, e-learning courses, an Online Yellow and Green Belt Certification will provide individuals with a valuable credential and knowledge to enrich their contribution within their organizations, to assume greater responsibility and assist with leading Lean business process improvement initiatives and promote effective cultural change.

“The online lean training tool developed by Lean Advisors has been a very effective way to deliver key training in a very efficient manner,” stated Steven Read CFO and VP Corporate Services, Brockville General Hospital. “ It has really enhanced our education offering, and by letting people go through the modules at their own pace it has allowed us to reach more people, more quickly, and with more effective outcomes.”

The Online Yellow and Green Belt Certification Programs are a flexible and cost–effective way to deliver consistent Lean training across your organization, assisting in an initial rollout of Lean Healthcare practices as well as in sustaining and embedding Lean concepts within an organization’s culture for the long term.

About Lean Advisors Inc.

Lean Advisors Inc, a privately owned Canadian corporation founded in 1999, is dedicated to transforming entire organizations with Lean Thinking and Process Improvement.

Lean Advisors provides full service, unique Lean Training, Consulting and Online e-learning Certification Programs to organizations across North America. Our Lean programs and services are delivered through our network of experienced senior Lean Consultants, providing a wealth of knowledge and practical hands-on experience to our diverse customer base. Our Online Certification Programs offer cost effective and flexible solutions to ensure a consistent message and training standard is delivered across organizations. We are committed to helping our clients build high-performance teams that continually innovate to transform their organizations and achieve sustainable results using Lean Principles and Methodology.

For More Information:  www.leanadvisorsonline.com or www.leanadvisors.com.    Media Contact: Bobbi Faulkner: bfaulkner@leanadvisors.com

About Quality Healthcare Network (QHN.CA)

QHN.CA is Canada’s leading independent QI community. Our community of healthcare organizations provides an open forum to share leading-edge ideas and lived experiences to increase the quality of health systems. Together, we turn the best new concepts into improvement practices.
We pride ourselves on our ability to develop relevant and timely programs and resources. For us, it’s crucial to work with professionals from all healthcare sectors because their insights can be adapted and applied in different environments. We collaborate to create scalable solutions for organizations of all sizes.

See how our community gets quality done at www.QHN.CA

About Automated Learning

Automated Learning Corporation® (ALC) is a premier-provider of corporate learning solutions and e-learning products that improve performance in the workplace. ALCs LearnTech® products utilize the best in instructional design, with high levels of interactivity, careful attention to adult-learning principles, and skilled use of multi-media.

ALC specializes in technical process training, serving a global market from

North America to Hong Kong, with clients ranging from large multinational manufacturers to small, single location companies. ALC is committed to providing comprehensive, high quality, effective and easy-to-use learning solutions that deliver improved performance and business value.  ALC has been providing courses in the area of Lean since 2002.

Automated Learning head offices are located in Kanata, Ontario, Canada.

For More Information: www.automatedlearning.com.

May 16, 2013

1:00 pm EST

Register Here

Visit www.leanadvisorsonline.com or Call  (877) 778-6413.

Endorsed by:

In this webinar, Larry Cote, President, Lean Advisors Inc. shares an objective assessment of Lean 15 years after the concept was coined ‘Lean”.  He highlights his own experiences as well as examines and identifies how different organizations from all industries have succeeded with Lean implementations.

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Our organization, Lean Advisors Inc., work with clients from a wide business spectrum including manufacturing, service, healthcare, education and government. In every case, we often hear, “Lean sounds good, but we are different.” Although every organization may be different in terms of what product or service they provide, our message is consistent. Lean is a customer centric philosophy designed to support organizations to better understand and meet the needs of their customers. Ultimate goal is to deliver the best product, with the highest quality and at least cost. This is non-negotiable.

The term Lean is probably one of the most misused terms, being used to describe every business process ‘improvement’ activity in the last 15-20 years. Lean is simply about creating more value for customers by eliminating activities that are considered waste. Any activity or process that consumes resources, adds cost or time without creating value becomes the target for elimination. Thus, Lean will work for any process or business that is looking to add value.

Different types of Waste exist in every company from the front office, to the production floor through to customer delivery. The easy part is to identify and classify the different types of waste. Knowing how to properly remove waste is much more challenging.  Waste is actually a symptom of poor workplace organization and work flow.

One of the important aspects of Lean is the focus on ‘system-level’ improvements (versus ‘point improvements’). It’s the system-level work that can remove waste and dramatically improve an organization’s bottom line results.

System thinking is about optimizing the end to end processes within a organization from the initial order or sales contact through to scheduling, production, distribution and ultimate delivery to the customer. Often organizations exceed in some of these areas but very few actually look at the entire end to end process or Value Stream. Lean analysis through Value Stream Mapping often uncovers situations where one segment of the business or one process step is optimized at the expense of another business segment or process.

Lean is actually a common sense approach based on five fundamental principles:

1. Define Value from the Customer Perspective
2. Identify and understand the end to end Value Stream
3. Make Value Flow within the end to end Value Stream
4. Create Pull from the customer
5. Strive for perfection

Where do we start?

One of the most common questions we are asked is – “Where do we start?” and “How do we do it the ‘right’ way?”  The key to success is to have an effective plan specifically for your situation and environment.  Without an effective plan, you will either fail totally or not maximize your potential.  This is actually the toughest challenge for the senior leadership in any organization.

It is critical to introduce an integrated Lean Transformation.  A three phase approach to adopting and applying Lean provides the best assurance to sustain your efforts over the long term and to embed Lean, creating a continuous improvement culture.

Phase 1- Strategic Planning

As organizations realize that they are at risk, they must begin to look for solutions. Current practices successfully brought companies to where they are today but unfortunately those same practices will not be enough for tomorrow. It is important for organizations to recognize the need for change and to begin a new journey to reinvent themselves. This does not mean you ignore your past but rather celebrate those successes and use them to leverage thinking to generate new solutions that can carry you into the future.
Leaders must be prepared to critically view the current situation from their clients perspective and to align their strategy/direction accordingly. Key metrics must be established to support and reinforce this new client-centric business perspective.

Phase 2- Developing the Plan

Developing the plan is actually applying the second principle of Lean. Enterprise Value Stream Mapping is a fundamental Lean tool that becomes the driver of change.
Enterprise Value Stream Mapping captures all activities along the entire Value Stream from customer order through to the production and delivery of the product or service. This tool provides us with the complete picture of the Current State and designs a more effective Future State; a vision of how we will organize work and processes with less waste.  Enterprise Value Stream Mapping includes the information, communication and scheduling flows to help companies fully understand how each process step or activity connects and integrates (or not) from a system perspective.

A value stream is the set of all activities, from request to delivery, used to provide a product or service to clients. Understanding and improving processes as integrated end-to-end systems is fundamental to real and sustainable improvement. An Enterprise Value Stream Map comprises of 3 components:

• Current State Map – Visual representation of how work / product presently moves through the Value Stream.
• Future State Map –  A 3-6 month visual representation of the vision, applying Lean Principles of Lean to design out waste.
• Implementation Plan – A documented plan outlining the Kaizens or Rapid Improvement Events necessary to transform The Value Stream from Current to Future State

Enterprise Value Stream Mapping takes the complexity of the end to end processes within a company and transforms it into a simple, visual document. This document is then used to analyze and develop the ‘right’ Future State Implementation Plan. It will have an accurate understanding of the ‘whole picture’ with identified changes creating ‘system’ improvements. Enterprise Value Stream Mapping is imperative for companies who want to have a clear and effective plan for change.

Phase 3 – Executing on the Plan

Executing the plan is the most critical phase for companies. This is the stage where real change must happen. It is important for the Senior Leadership to actively support and reinforce the need for change. Support involves a clear message that the Implementation Plan is not negotiable. The day to day issues although important cannot be an excuse. Time and resources must be allocated to support change. The status quo is not acceptable. New management performance measures developed in Phase 1 drive new management behavior to measure and reward action.

This action is in the form of structured rapid improvement events, commonly referred to as Kaizens. Kaizen is a combination of two Japanese words that simply means change for the better.

Kaizen Events move companies away from traditional lengthy projects where valuable resources spend more time in meeting rooms and completing updates than in making change happen.  Kaizen Events are a focused approach that brings critical resources together and empowers participants to not only root cause and determine solutions but most importantly to implement change. Time and effort is spent to support the value stream, reinforce system thinking to create sustainable improvement. Kaizen is action focused!

The Lean journey requires real effort and a true customer centric commitment. It is not something that can be partially introduced. Through our experience, working with many clients from many different industries, it has been demonstrated that a structured plan is critical to any Lean implementation. The 3 – phase approach described above provides an excellent framework for companies to start their Lean journey.

Mike Boucher Bio

Vice President Client Services
Mike has had extensive experience with Lean in his role leading companies in their Continuous Improvement and Lean journey. Over 20 years, he held numerous operational positions with a major distribution and logistics corporation.

Mike has had the opportunity to experience production and operational issues that are common to all organizations and companies.  He has dealt with the seemingly conflicting objectives to exceed customer expectations, while maintaining the highest level of quality at the lowest possible cost. The combination of hands-on experience and theoretical knowledge of Lean has made him an authority and an accomplished advisor.

By identifying how health care organizations and other industries have both succeeded and failed at improving timely access across their organizations and examine how to improve timely access across your organization or the system in which it operates.

Click to learn more about the 2013 conference.

About Taming of the Queue

Since 2004, the annual Taming of the Queue (TQ) conference has brought together a community of interest from across Canada to discuss access and wait time issues. Representing a wide range of perspectives, conference participants assess progress being made on wait-time measurement and management. Sponsored by several national health stakeholders, these events have enhanced knowledge about the issue, while exchanging best practices and helping to shape the public policy agenda.

Presented by Senior Advisor, Saverio (Sav) Pota, P. Eng on February 28th, 2013.

Universities and Colleges represent an immense opportunity for the application of Lean Concepts. Lean Advisors Inc, Senior Advisor Sav Pota P.Eng, will share his insights on how Lean principles and practices apply to educational processes.  He will also provide highlights from his own experiences in higher education, including success examples, lessons learned, and advice on how to best engage university/college staff in order to create a culture of continuous process improvement to achieve the most effective and efficient results.

http://youtu.be/7JwGwrW8JDY

Presented By: Larry Cote, President Lean Advisors Inc.

Join us for an Objective Assessment 15 Years after the Concept was coined ‘Lean’.

Register Here