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Continuous Improvement (CI) uses many Lean Tools which are still powerful and fundamental today.

This course gives practical introductory training on the pillar principals for CI and sends your people away with an understanding of how to begin the process of finding their next level.

• 5s: A properly sized, clean, organized, safe workplace is the best place to start.

• JIT: "Just in time" inventory management and delivery to customer reduces waste and costs.

• Heijunka: Visual, simple production planning that flexes with customer demand with reduced production lead-time and costs.

• Jidoka: Autonomation-"automation with a human touch". Teaches how to design a system to identify a defect, stop the process, fix the defect and root cause the process.

• Takt Time: Designing the process to match off to customer demand.

• Poka Yoke: Error proofing a process.

• Kaizen: Targeted team based improvement-absolutely fundamental to Lean.

• PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act (or Adjust). A fundamental tool in supporting many of the other key elements of Lean mentioned above.

Typically an 8 hour course. Pricing is dependent on the situation...let's talk.

Based on the work of Mike Rother and his studies of the Toyota Corporation, we consider this to be one of the most powerful methods of change a company can adopt. We have personally seen this approach save hundreds of thousands of dollars in production processes.

Scientific in its footing, cultural in its essence, Kata focuses on envisioning your desired destination (Challenge) and then taking consistent steps, both experimental and scientific, to progress toward it, one meaningful step at a time.

Daily cadence is best, with a coach/trainee relationship by people deep in the organization and close to the processes. Results are analyzed, learnings captured and a next step planned. Repeat tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. A cultural change towards continuous improvement develops.

The training is very interactive with a lot of hands-on practice and can be a one day or two day session.

You will learn about:

• Setting a Challenge

• Establishing  the Story Board

• Analyzing and documenting the Current State

• Setting a Target Condition

• Measuring Output

• Effective Coaching

• The Daily Coaching Cycle

• Handling Obstacles

You will come away with an understanding of how valuable it is in your head; practice it at work and that understanding will move right to your gut!

 One or two day session. Pricing is dependent on the situation...let's talk. 

This is a four session deep dive into the many tools of Continuous Improvement and Lean manufacturing. It takes our Lean Tools Overview to a much deeper level to allow practitioners to gain much better practical experience. Whereas the Overview class covers the basic elements and terminology, this breaks each one down much deeper to look at the tools for achieving each of the concepts.

Set as four full days of training, preferably over four weeks, we add to your basic knowledge to include the tools such as:

• Value Stream Mapping

• SMED-(Quick Changeover)

• One-Piece-Flow

• Andon Systems

• Constraint Analysis

• Root Cause Analysis

• Standard Work

• Gemba (go and see)

• Kanban (Pull Systems)

• KPI's (Key Performance Indicators)

• Muda (Waste)

• OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

• TPM (Total Productive Maintenance)

• Visual Factory

 Pricing is dependent on the situation...let's talk. 

As experienced in our years of leadership, this discipline is one of the most ignored in any organization. How many times have your heard, "it has to be this" only to find it really didn't fix the problem for good.

This four hour session takes the learner through the fundamentals of problem solving using the scientific methods and data to arrive at solutions. A number of methodologies will be discussed such as:

• Best Practices

• Root Cause Analysis

• Design of Experiments

• 8-D method

• Fishbone Model

• The 5 Whys

• Problem Solving Strategies

 Typically a 4 or 8 hour course. Pricing is dependent on the situation...let's talk. 

Many excellent managers are not well equipped to be Leaders. The difference? Managers focus to maintain the performance of an existing system. Leaders take a team to a system they didn't even imagine.

How do they make this leap? A lot of ingredients go into this from instinct, human interaction skills, methods of thought and communication.

This program is designed to lead managers or young leaders to a new way of thinking. It highlights the common mistakes new leaders make and shows them the many techniques experienced leaders have used effectively.

This training is customized for a particular company and their situation. Let's talk.