Mastering These 5 Lean Concepts Would Make Your Work-Life Easier

Lean is designed to deliver value to the clients while empowering your employees with the knowledge and motivation to do so! Lean concepts are created to save time, improve quality while adding more value to your product/service, regardless of the nature of your industry. The Lean principles are not just meant for companies but individuals too who eventually want to make their work-life easier. In fact, Lean manufacturing is an integral part of Japanese industry giants that have achieved success in the industry by following the Lean principles.

Let’s get you familiar with the concepts of Lean that would make your work-life easier than ever:

1. Value

A customer pays you for the value he sees in your product. Lean concepts help you achieve that much-desired value that your end customer appreciates every time. The top value could be achieved if you work efficiently, produce minimal waste and work for achieving a higher quality than your customer expects from you!

2. Process Waste

Identifying and eliminating the waste in the processes are the top priorities of Lean manufacturing. Waste isn’t about physical waste but everything counts in it that is consumed unnecessarily in your work process. The overproduction, idle times, unnecessary processing and defects are a few examples of waste. Lean recognizes and addresses them to boost productivity in the workplace.

3. Kanban

It’s another concept of Lean that’s developed to improve efficiency in the workflow through effective workflow visualization. It teaches you to visualize your all tasks and list them out on a Kanban board so that you don’t miss out any single thing in your to-do list. It lets the management know that you have a certain task to complete and you don’t get overloaded with another task for that time slot. Eventually, it helps to keep multi-tasking and distractions at bay and makes the work-life smoother.

4. The 5S

The 5S concept focuses on increasing efficiency in an organization while reducing the waste to the minimal. The 5S points to sort, straighten, shine, standardize and sustain to achieve the highest productivity in an organization while keeping it clean and organized.

5. Kaizen

Kaizen is the concept that focuses on continuous improvement. It follows the PDCA approach to reduce errors, streamline work process, implement plans, review results, revise plans if ineffective and run the cycle again. Kaizen is an ongoing process that fine tunes your work process to optimize it for success.

The Final Thoughts

Applying the concepts of Lean manufacturing, you could make continuous improvement in your work-life. Whether you are an individual looking to excel in career or a businessman striving to streamline your work process, Lean principles are for everyone's benefits. Adopting these concepts will put you on a path to continuous improvement that will make everyone happy in the loop, be it your employee or the customer.

Want your employees to learn Lean concepts for helping your business grow? SKIL is the place where you should get your employees trained for achieving Lean certification. The entire training could be done online with the carefully prepared curriculum by our experienced Lean instructors. Visit us online to get started with the Lean training.

Visit SKIL to know more about Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Six Sigma Certification, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Certification, Project Management etc.

5 Key Six Sigma Concepts Your Employees Should Be Familiar With

Six Sigma contributes to the success of a business that implements its strategies. Six Sigma concept has taken the world by storm and mastering it could propel your business performance to the top. Its principles are designed to solve any hurdle that you might face in business. The core concepts of Six Sigma focus on leveraging data and facts to excel the performance of businesses and make them profitable for the years to come.

If you are planning to get your employees certified for Six Sigma, then let's get you familiar with the key concepts of Six Sigma that make a difference in the success of a business:

1. Process Control

The process control is the vital Six Sigma concept that helps in the standardization of the operations. The end goal of the process control is to sustain the improvements made in operations. It solely focuses on the product's CTQ to achieve the stable functioning of the operations. Its aim is to prevent the error that creates nuances in operations. Long-term quality service could be achieved by implementing process control in the system.

2. Defect

A defect is a countable characteristic of a product/service that fails to fulfill the needs of a client. This is where Six Sigma strategies help by identifying and eliminating the defects from the product or service. Eventually, it saves time that's get wasted on rectifying defects and helps contribute to a defect-free service/product that meets the clients' expectations.

3. CTQ or Critical to Quality

The CTQ works the way up to identify those issues that affect the end quality of the product/service. These elements directly impact the customer's purchasing decision. For instance, if a car manufacturer that sells quality cars but at a low price ends up going out of stock for a period of time, the potential customers might turn to its competitors that sell quality but at a higher price to fulfill their demand. Six Sigma strategies identify these factors and improve them.

4. Variation

Variation is defined as a gap between the final and expected outcome. Though practically it’s almost impossible to produce the output with zero variation, still, it should stay in the permissible limits. The Six Sigma principles help control variation to a point by making key changes required in man, material and machine to produce the output that doesn’t affect the client’s critical to quality requirements.

5. Design for Six Sigma

The DMADV concept focuses on designing new processes rather than improving the existing ones. It helps in complete redesigning of the product or service that’s driven on customers critical to quality.

The Final Thoughts

Six Sigma paves the way to achieve the highest output by using state-of-the-art Six Sigma concept. At the end of the day, all products/services need to meet customers' requirements for their existence in the market. With its key concepts, Six Sigma helps these products/services achieve the CTQ demanded by a customer.If you want your employees to be skilled and produce the quality that exceeds the clients' expectations, arranging for the Six Sigma training could work wonders for your success.

Searching for an online institute that could help your employees gets hold of the Six Sigma concept? At SKIL, we have the best Six Sigma certified trainers to help your employees in a better way.

Want your employees to get hold of Six Sigma concept and acquire Six Sigma certification? Read the key concepts of Six Sigma that helps you gain traction in business if your employees master them all. Visit SKIL to know more about Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Six Sigma Certification, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Certification, Project Management etc.

Lean on 5S in Your Workplace

Prelude: Let’s learn about Lean’s 5S principles for your workplace organisation.

There are files all over your desk, there are consignments waiting to be finished and you’re yet to assign responsibilities to your team. It’s an absolute mess!

Does this seem like a familiar situation? Then you’ve come to the right place. Allow us to demonstrate how Lean 5S principles could be used to make your life at office much better!

The 5S’s stands for –

• Sort
• Set in order
• Shine
• Standardize
• Sustain

These 5 phases of the 5S principles can dramatically change the decorum of your workspace. Let’s find out how!

1. Sort –

“Sort in and sort out,

When in doubt, move it out”

This phase is concerned with identifying needed and un-needed items at your workspace. Firstly, you need to identify area and team members to implement 5S. Asses your present condition, take pictures and prepare a “as is” layout. Assign a red area for all the un-needed items, attach red tags and move them to the red area.

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2. Set in order –

“A place for everything needed,

And everything needed in its place”

This phase would involve brainstorming with your teammates and deciding on a work flow between steps. Re-design the layout if necessary. Create a clear picture of the Aisles, material storage, work stations, Sign boards, Labels, SOP/WI.

3. Shine –

       “Cleaning with meaning”

Brainstorm with your team to discover best ways to maintain the workplace clean and shining. Prepare a shine calendar- How to clean SOP’s. Shine calendar should elaborate – What, Who, When. Finally, prepare visual cleaning SOP’s.

(Download the Productivity Excel sheet to keep a tab of the process)

4. Standardize –

“What systems do we need to maintain first three S’s?”

When the first three S’s are implemented at your workplace, the next step is to develop a standard and a schedule for the whole organization. Visually display 5S’ maintenance standards and make it an integral part of the company culture.

Would Lean knowledge and Certification help us in this process?

5. Sustain –

“System/policies to sustain ‘5S’ culture”

The most important step of the 5S principle is to sustain the developed standards. In order to do this, you need to align 5S principles to the company’s policy, vision and mission. Train and engage everyone on applying 5S concepts. Develop and implement 5S RACI. The final step would involve conducting cross functional audits. Identifying and overcoming gaps continuously.

Applying these 5S principles would ensure that your workspace is Lean and clean!

Do you think Six Sigma tools could help in this process?

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Six Sigma Tool - SIPOC in HR and Recruitment

After exploring the Six Sigma measures in HR (link), today we’ll be looking at a tool that’ll resolve your problem if you’re spooked out during a recruitment process. SIPOC!

It stands for –

S – Supplier

I – Input

P – Process

O – Output

C – Customer

SIPOC is a high level process flow diagram in Six Sigma parlance, which helps you to identify key input, outputs, suppliers and customers to the process in scope. It is a spook proof formula in HR used to identify key members who should participate in the problem solving efforts.

Consider an example, where a HR manager is asked to handle the recruitment process in a company. He would have to follow the below mentioned steps to ensure that his HR team handles the process smoothly –

Step.  1 – Identify the new hire and the budget.

Step. 2 – Schedule and obtain approvals.

Step. 3 – Execute the schedules and coordinate.

Step. 4 – Get feedback, evaluations and approvals.

Step. 5 – Go live with the plan.

(Do you think he needs a SWOT analysis?)

The major problem with the plan is that the HR team doesn’t really have a clear picture of the input, inventory, personnel and the processes involved. This is where SIPOC comes extremely handy! It provides a brief description of the suppliers, inventories, internal inputs processes involved, output, internal and external customers.

The following SIPOC diagram was used by the HR manager which helped them identify and define their problem. The manger went on to use Six Sigma principles and a DMAIC approach which helped him and his team to ensure that the recruitment process was conducted with great efficiency.

Did Lean Six Sigma knowledge help the HR manager? Find out!

The next problem was the presence of various quality issues within the team. The HR manager was puzzled!Find out how Lean Six Sigma expert Prof. SK came to the HR manager’s rescue. What tools did they use to eliminate the problem? (Link 7 QC tools)

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Lean Six Sigma - 7 Quality Control tools to reduce attrition in HR

When Sreenath’s HR team was asked to monitor recruitment processes and attrition in his company, they would try to manually assess each process through methods which can rather be considered as out dated. He was petrified with the results and called for a team hurdle. Under such circumstances, his team suggested him to call in their friendly neighborhood Prof. SK.

Lean Six Sigma expert Prof. SK was invited to their office and was served a cup of filter coffee from the local canteen. He realized that the quality of the coffee was extremely bad. While, trying to control his temper and moving towards trashing the coffee, he came to a startling realization! Quality and control! They could use the7 Quality Control tools which would cater to every process in their firm. He primarily assessed each process –

• The HR team wanted to know the reasons for attrition in their firm.

Based on the trends in attrition, taking into account areas such as Years of experience, whether desired raise was given or not, Background qualification, Behavioural background and Relationship with manager, Prof. SK prepared a Checksheet. A classic tool which is commonly used for data collection. The checksheet would give them a better picture of reasons for attrition.

Click here to learn how Prof. SK implements Lean and management tools

• The next task was to understand the distribution of recruitment time in their firm,

Luckily, the Histogram is used for distribution analysis. It came to their aid as it provided an excellent solution to analyze the recruitment time for a L3 level employee on a scale of number of days.

• Sreenath’s major concern was with the lack of engagement in employees on continuous improvement initiatives. Prof. SK suggested that they brainstorm with their team using the Cause and effect diagram, which is deployed to understand the various causes to a particular problem. This diagram made Sreenath’s life easier!

• Following this, the HR team had received 1000 profiles for initial scrutiny which would usually contain a lot of missing information. To ease the process, Prof. SK suggested that they use the Pare to diagram. It is also known as the 80-20 rule, in other words 80% effect contributors are hardly a few categories, rest all categories contribute to the 20% of the effect only.

While explaining the Pareto principle, he showed them how they could categorize the missing information into particular fields and identify the fields which are significant contributors.

Do you want access to Prof. SK’s Magic lean Template?

Here it is!

• The HR team wanted to know if the performance depends on years of experience.

A Scatter Diagram was used, which shows us whether there is a relationship between two variables. Performance on a scale of 5 was plotted on the Y-axis, years of experience was plotted on the X-axis.

Based on the diagram it was established that there wasn’t much evidence to establish a relationship between performance and experience.

• They finally had to gauge the performance of individuals on a recruitment process. They subsequently used a Control Chart, which is used to measure how the process is performing.

Data was collected and plotted for the last 100 candidates processed.

(Want to learn how to apply Lean Six Sigma in Human Resource Department?)

After a hard day’s work, Sreenath and team decided to show their appreciation to Prof. SK for his timely wisdom by treating him to a cup of coffee in Star Bucks, which he seemed to have relished with a broad smile and a stroke of cream on his mustache!

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Lean Six Sigma Can Change Your Life!

Prelude: Prof. SK shares his story to a successful career.

Lean Six Sigma expert Prof. SK has deployed two strategies throughout his career. Lean, a strategy that focuses on eliminating waste and non-value-added tasks. Six Sigma, which uses a methodical five phase approach (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) to help understand the variables that affect a process in order to optimize it. Collectively, these two techniques have helped Prof. SK change the phase of operations in numerous organizations.

Prof. SK revisits his memory lane to narrate a tale from his struggling days. “I remember sitting on the bus stand bench and sipping a cup of coffee. I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. Things were going south both in my professional and personal life, when a newspaper lying next to me had an article which read, “This will change your life!” Out of sheer curiosity, I picked up the newspaper and read a couple of lines. It was an advertisement for a Lean Six Sigma course. This lead to a path of ups and downs, but ultimately I was able to take control of my destiny.”

Taking inspiration from Prof. SK’s story, we see that learning Lean Six Sigma and applying its methodologies can have an indispensable impact on your career. Needless to say, it can lead to better occupational opportunities, better salary and make you stand out from the competition.

Being able to put Skil’s Lean Six Sigma certification into your profile shows your promise to improving your business understanding and analytical abilities. It makes you conversant in different approaches to reduce costs and increase revenue. Further, you will be leading initiatives to improve processes and the quality of deliverables to the customers.

Find out if Lean Six Sigma certification will indeed benefit you!

Once, the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt stabilizes your professional career, the next step would be to obtain the Black Belt. The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt program is tailor made in order to enable you to experience increased confidence, master problem solving skills, boost career growth and become a champion in your organizations bottom-line improvement projects.

With the Six Sigma Lean certification under your repertoire, the power is truly in your hands!

SKIL; budding Project Management consulting & Lean Consultant company in India offers Six Sigma Jobs & Employee skill development programs in Lean Manufacturing, Project Management Training, Six Sigma Black Belt & Green Belt Certification in Bangalore, India.

5 Must Know Lean Principles for Daily Problem Solving

It isn’t uncommon for you to be caught up in a fix when you’re trying to finish too much in too less time. Luckily, we have Lean Six Sigma expert, Prof. SK explaining how you could incorporate Lean’s 5 golden rules of problem solving.

According to the Lean savant, the principles are as follows –

• Gemba – Actual place; you must visit the spot or your workplace where the event actually happens or happened.
• Gembutsu – Actual things; Next, you must examine the object, the actual equipment, material, products and other objectives actually involved in the event.
• Genjitsu – Actual facts; Follow this step by understanding actual facts and figures, the phenomenon (what actually happened, what you can actually observe with your own eyes, without any preconceived ideas about it)
• Genri – Principles; Refer to the theory and principles to be applied in the situation.
• Gensoku – Standards and parameters; Follow operation standards and parameters to achieve the desired result.

Unsure about your job? Read this!

Let’s understand how a Lean tool could be used following the Lean principles in order to save time and resources. Takt time is a widely used Lean tool which seeks to match the rate of production to the rate of sales or consumption. In the purest sense, it involves producing exactly what your consumers will consume, nothing more and nothing less.

Learn about the 5 steps to behavioral change!

Consider an example where a customer of a textile shop wants to buy 10 shirts every day and the normal production shift of the textile unit is 10 hours.

In this case, applying Lean’s Takt Time would help understand the ideal rate of production. So, Takt time is our Genri. The production unit of the textile firm is the Gemba. The shirts that need to be produced is Gembutsu or the actual things that need to be examined. Genjitsu or the actual facts would involve understanding that 10 shirts need to be produced according to the demands of the customer. Genosuke or the standard parameters is the production shift, which is equal to 10 hours in this case.

Download the productivity template here for free!

Considering all the facts and figures and applying the Lean principles, we arrive at the following formula –

Takt time = available time/customer demand

So, the Takt time in the aforementioned example is 1 shirt per hour, which would ideally help the textile firm to produce exactly the amount of shirts that are required to meet the demands of the customer.

The 5 principles of Lean could be applied in any given aspect of your life and an optimal solution corresponding to the situation can be yielded!

SKIL; an emerging Lean Consultant & Project Management consulting company in India offers Six Sigma Jobs & Employee skill development programs in Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma Black Belt & Green Belt Certification, Project Management Training in Bangalore, India.

How Six Sigma Measures Can Help Hr Department Track Absenteeism?

A major headache for most of the companies even today is that of absenteeism. Manual records aren’t completely reliable. Cases of missing data, false data and improper entry usually hinders the processes in HR. Even though technology has been introduced, human intervention is usually necessary to keep the data credible. Thus, bringing us back to ground zero. How does one keep accurate account of absenteeism?

Similar was the case of our friend Gopal, A HR executive in a XYZ company. He was tasked with the responsibility of processing monthly attendance of the employees. As a part of the process, he downloaded attendance punch times record from the attendance server. All the fields were critical. So, what was Gopal going to do now?

In such a case, he decided to bring in Six Sigma expert Prof. SK into the scenario. The breakdown suggested that there were five fields to enter data referring to attendance records. Prof. SK calmly assessed the case and made notes in his notebook. The notes were as follows -

• The Number of opportunities to go wrong for a form = 5.
• Six Sigma measure to be applied.
• From 1000 records completed during the month, we must draw a random sample of 100 forms and inspect for defects. (i.e. take a small sample size for inspection)

Post thorough inspection of 100 forms, 4 defects were found in 2 records. Gopal reckoned that their team had done a good job by achieving 98% quality (as 2 in 100 are defective records). Payroll department requirement was minimum of 97%.

Prof. SK’s Performance measurement on Six Sigma scale:

4 defects were found from 500 (100*5 opportunities).

This implied that the DPMO* was 8000.

Performance on Six Sigma scale was 2.41σ on a scale of 1 to 6σ.

Performance was considered below industry average, but satisfactory considering internal customer requirements.

(Learn more about Six Sigma tools for your projects)

Case conclusion:

Though the process exceeded internal customer (payroll) target of 97%, Gopal and team need to improve quality %, and continue to track and monitor performance on Six Sigma scale.

Prof. SK served as a timely aid to Gopal in helping him processing attendance is an immaculate manner by using Six Sigma measures.

*(DPMO or Defects per Million Opportunities) is one of Six Sigma measures. It is calculated by using the following formula,

DPMO = (defects/total number of opportunities) * 1,000,000

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