101 Kaizen Templates

101 Kaizen Templates: Workplace 5S Audit Sheet

Why would the world need another 5S audit sheet? Well, kaizen never ends, that's why. Although it does rest sometimes. There are 10 questions, 2 in each of the five categories of 5S. You need to know what to look for to give a "tough" score, but even a beginner more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: PWINT Kaizen Worksheet

The idea of PWINT kaizen is to look for kaizen ideas that are within a narrowly defined process band, with a particular perspective of observation. The letters PWINT stand for Processing, Waiting, Inspection and Transportation. It's tempting to pronounce PWINT as "point" but it's more fun to imitate Elmer Fudd more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Production Control Board

The hourly production control board, otherwise known as the hour by hour chart, is used to monitor the progress or output of a process against plan. The advantage of this kaizen template is in its simplicity, near real time performance tracking and in that it promotes the management behavior of more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Kaizen Newspaper

One of the guidelines to operating an effective suggestion system is to limit the scope of each person’s kaizen ideas to the work they themselves do. Sometimes kaizen ideas are generated and developed as teams but the same rule applies. The theory is that the person doing the job knows more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Kaizen Idea Suggestion Form

This kaizen idea suggestion form is a simple one-page template you can used as part of a formal suggestion program or to document and record specific improvements made as part of your continuous improvement program. This particular kaizen was a result of a dialog with a reluctant machine operator on more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Lean Leadership Self Check

The Real Leader, states Ron Pereira today on the Lean Six Sigma Academy blog, "...listens, respects, challenges, disciplines, and genuinely cares about his or her employees. Yes, real leadership is hard to practice. But just like a healthy and happy home life, it’s definitely worth the effort." It's definitely hard, more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Daily Hansei Sheet (Pluses & Deltas)

Last year Ron Pereira wrote an article titled "How not to screw up pluses and deltas" that gave useful tips on how to properly review at the end of a day of class room training or a shop floor kaizen. The pluses and deltas activity is a great example of more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Motion Economy Chart

One of the toughest things that a kaizen consultant has to do is to tear down the results of past kaizens. This is hard because people develop a sense of ownership over the status quo, no matter how bad, and when they have worked to make it significantly better through more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Spaghetti Diagram

The spaghetti diagram needs very little introduction. Aptly named so because the lines movement drawn on this diagram come to resemble a pile of tangled noodles, it is an movement path diagram by a more appetizing name. The spaghetti diagram is a great waste observation tool even for people taking more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Changeover Analysis

One of the main drivers of non-lean behavior such as local optimization, batch work, and building up inventory is the desire to avoid time lost during changeovers between one job to another type of job. Sometimes this is reinforced by how we make financial measurements, seeking to earn hours or more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Takt Time Calculator

A reader pointed out that the takt time for posting the 101 kaizen template has exceeded. It is true that we have not been hitting a consistent 1 template per 3.5 days. To meet our goal for 101 of these by the end of 2008 we will need to recalculate more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: ECRS Worksheet

ECRS stands for Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange and Simplify and is an age-old industrial engineering process analysis method. We humans are not too bad at rearrange, but if we were a lot better at simplify, eliminate and combine the world would be a better place. In keeping with the "motion" theme more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Minor Motion Analysis

We're big fans of making significant organization-wide change by involving everyone in minor improvement activity every day. This is especially important for sustainability as you progress on your lean journey. As you progress in lean and succeed in taking out the waste, it can become harder and harder to find more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Safety Cross

Early in the year is a good time to refresh our commitment to health, safety and sustainability of our various enterprises. Despite our best intentions, habits being what they are, these resolutions are too often not so resolute. Unlike quality or profit, safety is one area where there is no more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: Stand in the Circle

The 60-minute kaizen exercise we call "stand in the circle" originates in the teaching method Taiichi Ohno used which involved a piece of chalk, a circle drawn on the concrete floor, and a manager left to stand in it for hours. Ohno would return to check on what the manager more>>

101 Kaizen Templates: The Checklist

This is the first post in the 101 kaizen templates series. Only 100 more kaizen templates to go before December 31, 2008! Takt time is 3.5 days per template. I considered planning out and structuring this series but for now we'll just go with the flow and pull. How can more>>

101 Kaizen Templates

January 2008 will mark 10 years Gemba Research has been in business. This blog has been active for just over four years now. We are reflecting on the past 10 years in an effort to renew our purpose and focus our energies. We will do the same for the purpose more>>