VIBCO has been on its lean journey since 2004 and sees visual management as an important next step.

The cost for day 1 is $800 and the cost for day 2 is $400. To see complete event details or to register, please visit the LEI website.

Elmore Leonard is an American novelist who has been writing lean and taut crime novels for a half century. He is the Toyota of crime novels, if that's a compliment. Reliable, not flashy, always delivering on the promise of a hard-boiled reading experience. He does it by sticking to a process called Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Good Writing. They are:

1. Never open a book with weather
2. Avoid prologues
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"...he admonished gravely
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose"
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip

Skip it. Avoid it. Leave it out. Never touch the stuff. Don't be tempted. Stick to the story. Succeed through subtraction. This man is a lean thinker. And he bears an uncanny physical resemblance to both John Shook and James Womack, after they borrowed some hair from Mike Rother. If Elmore Leonard cared what a gemba walk was, he might say something like this:

1. Never open a gemba walk dialogue with weather. Show some respect for the people you are talking to on the gemba. Know who they are, know something about them, ask about their kids, their hobby, their dog, whatever lights up their life.

2. Avoid prologues. Don't spend time explaining who you are or why you are walking the floor and asking questions. If you need to this, you don't trust them or they don't trust you. If they are surprised to see you, that's a problem. Build trust first.

3. Never use an interrogative other than "why?" to carry dialogue. Go ahead and use the other interrogatives such as "what" and "how" to start the dialogue. Stick with "why" to carry the dialogue forward. You're on a gemba walk to identify lack of standards, standards that are not attainable or standards not being followed, and engage people in thinking about why this is so. Encourage them to find creative solutions to these problems.

4. Never use the word "not" to modify the interrogative "why?" You're smart, maybe you're in a position of power. It's terribly tempting to show that by giving answers. You're not on a gemba walk to solve problems. Insted, develop the sensitivity to see everyday problems, the skills to solve problems creatively, in a scalable way. People expect leaders to solve problems. Your "why not..?" robs them of an opportunity to come up with solutions themselves. Let them learn how to fix it, even if it takes longer.

5. Keep your "a-ha!" moments under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 steps of gemba walking. If you're doing a whole lot more learning, you might need to go back to kaizen school before you're ready to teach. Or maybe just keep walking.

6. Never use the words "maybe" or "I guess." You're solving problems again. Stop speculating. See rule #3.

7. Use technical terms, jargon, sparingly. Speak in code only if you want to keep secrets. Speak the language of the floor. Listen with an open mind to whatever lessons it will yield. Humble yourself on the gemba walk and become the learner.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of problems. You're walking the gemba to check the level of understanding of the problem solving process, not whether they have the right solution. The right process yields the right results.

9. Don't ask people for great detail in describing places and things. Take a healthy interest in the workplace, the product, the process. Don't let curiosity take over and lose focus on the purpose of the gemba walk. It's not industrial tourism.

10. Try to leave out the part that customers tend to skip. You know, the non value added parts. Oh, that's most of your operation? Sorry. You better get busy with kaizen.

This one goes out to my friend BHC. Deep down, you're pretty hard-boiled. Thanks for the encouragement.

Many years ago when I was first learning how to drive a car, my dear young aunt Ruth rode with me on an Illinois country road. She taught me the importance of accelerating when going into a curve. This was deeply counter intuitive to me, as I had previously always tapped the breaks when hitting a curve in the road. I'm no race car driver, but this lesson has stuck with me, and I think of her whenever drivers tap their breaks on the local highway S-curves, a cascade creating completely unnecessary traffic slowdowns.

This year, more than any year in memory, is starting off both with curves and increasing momentum. I am looking forward to the challenges and learning opportunities ahead for us in Kaizen Institute. Mentally, I am leaning into 2012. Just as my aunt Ruth taught me, it is a time to be fully engaged in the process of change, driving forward faster even when the road changes course.

This got me thinking about the popular expression of "lean forward" and "lean back" entertainment, and whether the definition of "lean" as a business practice might not benefit from the other definition, meaning to incline in a direction. A "lean forward" medium such as the personal computer or internet requires a certain level of interaction, intent and engagement while a "lean back" medium such as television or radio requires only passive attention, and not even full attention at that. Similarly, lean management is approached by some in a lean-forward-and-engage way and by others in a lean-backward-and-watch way.

Lean management is about both acceleration and change. It requires that the drivers and leaders lean into the process, rather than frequently tap the breaks, confuse those who follow and cause the organizational equivalent of the dreaded S-curve slowdown. The only way leaders can accelerate change is to engage in it themselves, to get a feel for both the vehicle and the road, leading by example before delegation. All levels within an organization must lean into it, everyone must be involved in kaizen.

Practically speaking, this means going back to the basics and checking that customer expectations, standards, visuals, zones of control, objectives, team norms, responsibilities and lines of communication are all clear and direct. If you have to ask, it's not clear enough. This means removing barriers to making improvement, often meaning that we must take time to break down larger problems into smaller, more actionable ones. At other times, it means removing whatever wall, policy, prop or paradigm that people are leaning against, leaning back in disengagement. Leaning forward, even when we fall, we have a chance to right ourselves and make stumbling progress.

May your roads be as straight and smooth as the ones running through Illinois corn country, may the grip of your wheels be firm and your acceleration smooth when the earth inevitably curves beneath you.

Happy 2012.

In an excellent blog post by Jamie Flinchbaugh today he introduces 4 myths about the principle of "Respect for People", saying:

But respect for people means different things to different people. To some it means avoiding layoffs at all costs. To others it means giving them freedom to do whatever they want, or assume that they are right. To others it means trust. In all, I see the principle of respect for people thrown about sometimes casually, and sometimes in direct conflict of what I believe the principle is truly about.

Building on this theme, I offer a 5th myth.

5. Removing the "8th Waste" means utilizing people's creative ideas for kaizen.

The so-called 8th waste of human potential is often used as an underpinning for employee involvement programs, suggestions systems, and other means of tapping people's unused creative potential. These things are essential, but is this truly respect for the person? This ultimately goes back to a resource utilization mindset, i.e. "What can the employee do to help reduce cost for the company with their creative ideas?" While smart companies like Toyota use kaizen suggestions and quality circles more to develop problem solving skills then to find big cost savings, this interpretation of respect for people via exploitation of the 8th waste only addresses half of human potential at best, the quantitative half.

When we start removing the 8th waste, stop ignoring people as idea generators, listen and put into practice their kaizen suggestions, we are engaging more of a person's potential. It is an quantitative improvement. Instead of only physical ability or trained-in job skills, we are making use capacity for creativity, problem solving and so forth. But more thought and more action does not necessarily mean better throught and better action. In fact if an evil overlord succeeds in removing the 8th waste and in empowering his underlings to find more creative ideas for subjugating the masses of the world, this is a bad thing from the view of the majority of humanity.

It is not so much the productive output, the quality of workmanship or even the number of innovative or cost savings ideas that gives us a true sense of what it means to practice respect for people in the widest sense. We must maximize the good that people can do as a result of their work, i.e. serving people. This is too often totally missing from the respect for people discussion associated with lean. Eliminate waste, continuously improve, pursue perfection... to what end?

Although it may seem pre-industrial to argue for ethics as part of the education and management of a workplace, work is where most of us spend more than a third of our waking time. Another third, likely not in ethics class but sinning or striving to do good as one will. And the final third, we sleep, dream to sort and file the impressions made in our mind during the day while we rest our bodies. When, if not at work, can we practice the ethics of service to people? How better to demonstrate respect for humanity?

The respect for people principle must be applied not only to people within the company but to customers and broader society, extended to what some call Corporate Social Responsibility. Firms that fail to embody and teach ethics to their people will ultimately be rejected by societies that value ethics. The same is true for political or social organizations which fail to act in fair and ethical ways; society rejects them through self-organizing protest movements.

The 5th myth is that respect for people can be demonstrated simply by further teaching and practice of kaizen, or investing more in self-directed teams and front-line empowerment. This is easier to understand if one reflects on the original meaning of kaizen which is not simply "improvement", i.e. change for the better, but change for good.

This is an important topic so I encourage readers to leave comments with their 6th, 7th or 8th myth about respect for people. I encourage other bloggers to pick up the theme, linking to previous articles on this subject, starting with Jamie's and my. Let's start a virtuous circle of discussion to deepen our practical understanding of the respect for people principle.

Fabric is one of the oldest technological artifacts of humanity. Water is essential to our survival and ubiquitous in our daily lives. So it is fitting that these two things come together in a metaphor about kaizen - changing things for the better.

The Wet Blanket

Our friend and contributor S.M. Junaid observed ten deadly hurdles to doing kaizen within in small and medium-sized companies. These he calls "wet blankets". A wet blanket is typically a person who takes the fun out of a situation for others. Perhaps it came from the use of water-logged blankets to put out unwanted fires.

Junaid extends the wet blanket idiom to a set of expressions people use when they feel uncomfortable supporting or participating in change. Such people may purposely put "wet blankets" on the kaizen effort or try to persuade senior management that improvement efforts should be stopped.

Here are some examples of wet blankets that Junaid has heard:

1. We have tried it before and it didn't work
2. Nobody else is doing it
3. Nobody is talking about it
4. It's not acceptable to management
5. It's not in the budget
6. You're not the expert
7. Who do you think you are?
8. Let me think about it.
9. Do you know more than me?
10. This is not your concern

Junaid writes:

How will we move towards improvement with these 10 deadly hurdles? It is on your choice and devotion that you will only do your plain job or an effective job in your organization, without kaizen your job is not valuable for you and your organization in long-term basis.

My experience is that it is better to move slowly but continuously towards improvement, not strike or jump the hurdle as this may cause harm. The only a tool you have is determination. If you see any hurdle in your way slightly change your path but don't stop moving forward. Cross the hurdle and again put your feet on track and move toward your destination.

Do kaizen again, again and again at last the wet blanket becomes dry.

The idea of the wet blanket reminded me of a couple of other expressions related to kaizen and the moisture content of fabrics.

The Dry Towel

After decades of kaizen, people at Toyota speak their efforts at cost reduction as being like "wringing the water from of a dry towel". This is hard to do, unless you use that towel to go mop up moisture (problems) in a totally new area. There is still a lot of water on the floor even at Toyota, looking across the entire extended value stream from retail and distribution back through supply chain and design. In fact there is no reason whatsoever to limit the search for moisture to within the enterprise value stream. Many businesses who have developed kaizen capabilities, such as Toyota, Boeing and Group Health to name just a few, share these resources with not-for-profit and public sector causes. If you have a dry towel, know how to use it, and have time, go mop something up..

The Sponge

Although technically not a fabric but the porous and dried out bodies of sea animals, one of my sensei asked an American manager who was too smart for his own good to "become a sponge". The message was to open up and absorb everything instead of being a wet blanket who questions everything intellectually and critically, finding fault.

"A sponge doesn't have a brain! It doesn't move! It just absorbs!" said the sensei, waving a soft porous block in emphasis.

The manager then pointed out that sensei was mixing metaphors between the sea animal and the household cleaning tool. This verbal judo only made the sensei's demand more firmly that he be "brainless and motionless" for a spell.

Standing in the circle is not enough, it is necessary to enter the circle not as a damp cloth but as a dry sponge.

Sometimes called jidoka or autonomation, the lean approach to quality is to develop processes that prevent, detect, contain and countermeasure errors. The aim of a Built-in Quality system is to stop defects from being passed to the next process i.e. the customer. Commonly expressed "Don't accept, make or pass on poor quality" this is possible only by understanding how various principles and tools interact within a Built-in Quality system. These enablers include the andon system, the stop-and-call / stop-and-fix principle, Quality Key Points within standardized work, rapid response teams, practical problem solving, mistake proofing, process capability and many others.

The seminar speaker will be Chris Schrandt, Senior Consultant with Kaizen Institute. Chris has taught kaizen and the Toyota Production System (TPS) for the past 23 years in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden and Mexico in manufacturing, healthcare and service fields. Chris gained a deep understanding of Built in Quality over 10 years as Quality Engineering Manager with Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky. He learned under Japanese coordinators and experts, and directed a team of 40 engineers and support staff responsible for improvement projects across multiple suppliers and processes.

Date, Time & Location

Monday, December 5, 2011
0800AM - 1330PM (lunch provided)
Peterbilt Motors Company
3200 Airport Road
Denton, Texas USA

Cost

The cost is $150 per person, including lunch and printed materials.

We hope to see you there!

Bob Emiliani is the author of ten books, six of them in the Real Lean series. The most recent title Moving Forward Faster: The Mental Evolution from Fake Lean to REAL Lean is an executive summary of these six books. It is 100 pages, about half of which is the core message structured around 40 pages of bullets on four themes to aid in the "mental evolution" of executives towards real lean thinking. The remaining pages are closing thoughts, next steps and rich appendices.

The lean management system is, in Bob Emiliani's words, "a non-zero-sum principle-based management system focused on creating value for end-use customers and eliminating waste, unevenness, and unreasonableness using the scientific method." His Real Lean series of books makes its greatest contribution in stressing the Respect for People principle as the least appreciated and least practiced by executives. The Moving Forward Faster book is best read as an introduction to Bob's thinking, and as a reference for diving deeper into his ideas.

Across four chapters Bob debunks 85 commonly held beliefs in the Economic, Social, Political (organizational) and History arenas. Each of these ideas are explained using as few as two and as many as nine bullet points. The sheer number of bullet points across the 40 pages will leave one dizzy if the four chapters are are read in one go. It is possible to open the book at almost any point, read a few sentences, nod in agreement or shake our heads in recognition of fake lean behaviors within our own organizations.

In the section on Economic ideas, Bob asks "Where are the lean economists?" and points out that economics is a social science rather that a hard science like physics or mathematics, and that formal root cause analysis is never used to discern sources of failure of economic theories. This is a big idea, considering that some of the most important decisions in our lives vis a vis our life in "the economy" are influence by social scientists who never practice root cause analysis. In any case some of the most interesting and important ideas are in this section. Here is a sampling of the gems.

E10 - Short-term financial focus

When do you plan on going out of business? If the answer is never, then why have a strong short-term focus?

It's a great point, but misses the fact that executives many times aren't thinking at all about business continuity or the long-term because that is not what they are rewarded for or paid to do. Or perhaps it is not a rhetorical question but an invitation to the reader to list their reasons.

E16 - Fixation on unit costs and unit prices.

Executives say: "Every cost element a company faces needs to be examined." Executives should instead say: "Every process a company uses needs to be examined." Costs are subordinate to processes.

And Taiicho Ohno said, "Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced."

E20 - Cost is not real if it is not on a spreadsheet.

Cost = measured cost + unmeasured cost. Unmeasured cost is always greater than zero. Just because some costs do not show up on a spreadsheet does not mean they do not exist.

Taiichi Ohno would have gone to the gemba to see the costs, never to a spreadsheet. Anyone bringing him a spreadsheet would have soon found themselves standing in a circle.

E24 - Must grow at double-digit rates.

Strive for stable long-term growth: 2-3 percent annual growth.

The percentage for stable long-term growth of an organization's revenue would seem to depend on various factors including competition, the available local market, disruptive innovations reducing revenue from existing products, changes in demographics leading to changes in organic demand, changes in tax rates, rate of inflation in fixed and variable costs, etc. Granted that Bob Emiliani starts out by saying that economics is a social science and not one that is build on fact-based confirmation of theories, this theory or claim of 2-3 percent being an adequate growth rate begs further explanation, perhaps found in one of the Real Lean books.

The section on Social Ideas that Must Diminish or be Eliminated puts various universal organizational principles in context of how misguided executive thinking can cause lean failures. These ideas include but are not limited to misconceptions about teamwork versus individualism, blaming people, standardization, job descriptions, excessive gaps in compensation, excessive gaps between words and actions, and the focus for executives on learning rather than having answers. This may be the most accessible chapter, dealing largely with actionable personal behaviors or beliefs of executives, such as:

S12 - Leaders are smarter than followers.

Leaders know much less than they think because information is highly filtered to deliver only good news.

In the Politics section Bob makes a case for executives to eliminate organization politics in that this enables a freer flow of material and information, resulting in better decisions, actions and results. The section on History is almost entirely a list of non-lean behaviors of managers, centering around the failure to listen to stakeholders, attempt to solve problems at the root cause level, and to learn.

The four Appendices sections are definitely not to be skipped over. In fact, they could easily have been within the main flow of the book, rather than at the end. The notion of Feral Managers may offend some readers who recognize these traits in themselves, but everyone has met at least one wild, out-of-control executive, and we could all do with fewer. The assessment form and instructions in Appendix IV is a good opportunity for self-examination by executives and organizations, from a behavioral and mental angle, as opposed to the typical tool or system-based lean assessment. Designed as a "failure analysis" method, Bob Emiliani shared with me that it was intended as an aid in reducing human suffering.

It was a challenging book at first reading because of its structure. However on second reading, 8 months later, the content proved solid and durable, begging further description and discussion. Luckily for that purpose, we have Real Lean volumes 1 through 6.

The target audience is executives, however it is far more likely that this book will be read by non-executives, if only for the simple reason that there are far more of them in the world. For the open-minded executive this book offers many challenges to firmly held notions of economics, history, politics and society that guide but limit the organization's performance. The book invites the reader to understand why these ideas are contrary to "real lean". For the non-executive reader, it provides a glimpse into many of the principles that govern why corporations and executives do many things that are contrary to a lean culture.

Webinar: Putting the Continuous Back in Continuous Improvement

Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 1400 - 1500 (Central Time, GMT -6). Sign up for the webinar

Many organizations have understood the word kaizen to mean "kaizen events," or focused week-long improvement workshops. Innovative healthcare organizations, such as ThedaCare and Virginia Mason Medical Center have learned that kaizen events are not enough, that kaizen must also involve a large number of small, low-cost improvements driven by front-line staff.

Mark Graban, who is author of the award-winning book Lean Hospitals, a popular speaker, blogger, a consultant to hospitals and Chief Improvement Officer of KaiNexus. Mark will share his insights about what it takes to make kaizen successful and sustainable, showing examples of kaizen improvements from numerous healthcare organizations, including the practical mechanics for facilitating and managing kaizen.

Register now - FREE Webinar

I'm honored once again to contribute to the Management Improvement Carnival series which John Hunter at the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog has kept going now to its 149th round. As I looked back over some of the blog posts and articles that caught my attention recently, a surprising theme emerged among many of them: motivation.

Motivation is something everyone shares. It is at the root cause of why we do many of the things we do, directly affects our attitude, our effort, our level of success, and therefore eventual happiness. Some organizations measure employee engagement scores, track the number of kaizen suggestions or otherwise attempt to track the level of motivation of people. Motivation is an incredibly valuable input to the success of a team but too often only the results are recognized. Where do we start in building a highly engaged, highly motivated organization?

Addressing the question of "Where do I start?" in learning lean thinking and putting it into practice, Mark Rosenthal suggests adopting the find the bright spots advice from the book Switch. Finding brights spots is always good advice. While companies fail at thing for a wide variety of local and specialized reasons, success tends to cluster around a handful of factors; motivated people; removing waste, variation and burden; a long-term view. We need to drill a level deeper in each one of these. Simply saying "remove waste" is not enough, we need to dig deeper to understand the best practices and "bright spots" at organizations we benchmark to the level where we can put them into practice. We need to learn not only what works well, but why. We need to ask, "What drives or motivates their most successful systems?"

As things are when it comes to understanding cutting edge management practices, the secret to motivating people is simple, age-old and often counter-intuitive at first glance. One article explains why you don't have to do anything special to motivate employees. Rather, it is a matter of not demotivating people. Just as traditional improvement has focused on increasing the value while ignoring the waste, we need to stop the leaks rather than buy more piping. This is summarized in a quote attributed to Dr. Deming and others:

If management stopped demotivating their employees then they wouldn't have to worry so much about motivating them.

On productivity and motivation, one article began by explaining how researchers found that doing or saying something nice, even if this was a very small gesture, has proven to improve the job performance of people including doctors. The premise is that positivity promotes performance. This was not so surprising, but the articled also introduced an idea called Appreciative Inquiry, the explanation of which I will truncate to "valuing the best in people [...], as opposed to fixing what's not working". As a firm believer in the importance of concise, constrained and well-worded problem statements struck me as counter to experience. It's proponent Dr. David Cooperrider, of Case Western Reserve University was quoted:

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating mindless happy talk. Appreciative Inquiry is a complex science designed to make things better. We can't ignore problems--we just need to approach them from the other side.

I'm very curious to learn what that "other side" looks like, and how well we can dream and realize a vision of a better future without taking a cold, hard, even at times borderline demotivating look at the root causes of our troubles.

The advice to accentuate the positive was counterbalanced by another article in a series on the importance of a leader's grasp on human psychology and how to crush an employee's enthusiasm, a commentary on a video by author and management research Jim Collins. Namely, Collins explains how 3 actions by leaders demotivate people: hype, futurism, and false democracy or appearing to listen to input but not acting on it. Futurism is a failure to link people's day-to-day work and achievements with long-term objectives, and hype is defined as "a failure to acknowledge the real difficulties the organization faces." Dr. Cooperrider agrees that "we can't ignore problems" but Jim Collins warns leaders not to make the future too rosy or the picture too bright, as we may be tempted to "keep things positive" at the expense of working from the brutal facts

What if things are in turmoil and there is no time to reflect on the positives, paint a rosy picture of the future, and work on motivation - hype or no hype? Often we encounter leaders who say they are too busy with projects or problems and have no time for kaizen - neither to improve processes performance through direct technical intervention nor motivation of people, and certainly not both. Lack of time for kaizen is not an excuse, but rather a problem to be studied and countered through effective root cause corrective action. No doubt positive thinking can help in these situations, but practical problem solving is essential to unblock organizations in this state.

In a similar vein, solid advice comes on this topic from another article to call firefighting and band-aids what they are but do them in a structured way. A structured approach to kaizen helps organizations to problem-solve your way out of the vicious circle of "problems > firefighting > no time for root cause correction or capability building > problems > firefighting..." into one that is more stable and in-control.

Kevin Meyer found some bright spots on his trip to India and documented them in several fun articles in Evolving Excellence. My favorite was leadership lessons from Ganesha, a set of mindsets and behaviors that are both motivating personally and constructive in motivating others.

There are not two but three definitions of the Japanese word jidoka, which students of kaizen and the Toyota Production System are likely to encounter. In fact there are two different jidokas. Coined by Taiichi Ohno as a play on words to turn the Japanese word for "automation" or "self-moving" into "autonomation" or "self-working", the word jidoka and jidoka are pronounced identically, though written slightly differently in Japanese. Please see previous article for more on jidoka.

The "self-working" or "autonomation" term is used to kaizen two distinct problems.

First, to separate human work and machine work so that humans can do less non value added and more value added work within a given period of time. For example in a machining process that requires a person to open the door of a CNC machine, unload a part, loads another part and close the door, three out of four of these steps can be done by the machine. The only work that requires the human touch is loading the part, and perhaps doing a visual check. This type of automation is typically done in a low-cost manner. Automating the final step of loading and inspection is higher cost, and not the kaizen way.

Second, autonomation is used to prevent processes from making error after error by building in en error prevention or detect-and-stop functions. Jidoka gives the process the equivalent of the human autonomic nervous system, which can respond to stimuli without conscious thought. This can take the form of sensors on a machine, lines of code that mistake proof a data entry field, or a button pressed by a person to alert the supervisor that the process cannot be performed correctly.

This photo from the kitchen of an apartment-hotel is an example of the first type of jidoka - low cost automation eliminating a step of human work.

When the door of the kitchen cupboard is opened, the lid of the trash can is lifted due to tension created in the string attached between the lid and the cabinet wall.

These types of 2-in-1 processes or mechanisms are called nagara in Japanese kaizen circles. The word nagara means "during" or "while doing" something, as in "She sings while she runs". With a bit of creativity we can find motions, data entry tasks or mechanism that can be combined or triggered in such a way to turn manual processes into examples of jidoka - self-working low-cost automation.

Congratulations on the Kaizen Institute UK team for a successful conference and gemba walks with Masaaki Imai in the United Kingdom. In an ongoing effort to spread the word about kaizen and what it can do for organizations, my colleagues at Kaizen Institute UK are making a unique offer of a free lean diagnostic, for a limited time.

The Kaizen consultants will not come dressed in tuxedos, as amusing as that may be, unless you manage to convince them that this is normal attire on your gemba.

Here is the offer.

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Free Lean Diagnostic

During the months of November & December 2011 and January 2012, the Kaizen Institute UK team is offering a select number of free on-site diagnostics of operational excellence. The aim is to help you see opportunities for your company to make improvements in process performance and people development areas, with significant financial, quality or customer service impact.

There are a limited number of days available, please contact us to secure your free lean diagnostic.

For a manufacturing organization struggling with production capacity losses, high levels of working capital, poor flow and long lead-times, high error rates or any other factors driving up cost, we can show you benchmarks, identify opportunity areas and recommend next steps.

For a healthcare organization suffering from long patient waiting times, high bed occupancy, patient safety concerns or high stock levels, we would especially like to hear from so we can share practical ways to address these areas.

We have applied our expertise in Kaizen successfully to public sector, retail and a variety of service organizations, and we also invite you to learn how lean can help you. If you would like to take advantage of this offer, please contact us with a brief message to arrange a qualification interview by phone or in person.

The diagnostic will include a formal presentation of findings to your management team, highlighting key areas for improvement. After the diagnostic there is no obligation, sales pressure or commitment to any further engagement with Kaizen Institute.

Contact

To learn how you can take advantage of the free Lean Diagnostic offered by Kaizen Institute UK, please contact us at:

Kaizen Institute UK
Regus House
Herald Way
Pegasus Business Park
Castle Donington DE74 2TZ
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1332 638114
Email: uk@kaizen.com

I look forward to hearing from you.
Dan Alexander
Managing Director, Kaizen Institute UK

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Over the past 25 years the Kaizen Institute has been helped hundreds of companies in many different sectors with their Continuous Improvement and training requirements.

Learn more about the consultancy and training services of Kaizen Institute UK.

"The Kaizen Institute's team have been extremely effective at getting at "root cause" and driving waste & costs out of the business. They have proved themselves to be especially flexible when we needed support at very short notice"

Site General Manager at a major food manufacturer in the UK