Leading Proactive Improvement

The importance of getting the balance right between the focus on technical improvement and people development is illustrated by the words of this CI manager after their programme began to deliver outstanding performance.   

"In the beginning of the improvement journey, one of our top Production Managers thought, that 90 % of the reasons for ineffective use of the machinery was due to short term technical problems. Today he recognises that time invested in developing people to prevent problems is the route to high performance."  

LEAN TPM ROADMAP

The Lean TPM road map, based on the practices of well respected and award winning organisations, guides the simultaneous development of senior management, front line leaders and front line teams to establish:

• A proactive improvement culture that drives significant year on year performance gains.
• Engagement with delivery of business improvement goals.
• Competency to apply the right blend of Lean and TPM tools to meet the challenge of each phase of the journey to industry leading performance.

A COMMITMENT TO IMPROVEMENT PULL

At the heart of that winning approach is a Leadership commitment to

• Deliver improvement pull by engaging the workforce with improvement as part of the daily routine,
• Rather than top down driven initiative push by management edict.
• The outcome is a work environment where people engage every day in removing waste and hidden losses by improving the effectiveness of working methods. 

The strongest lever that leaders have to deliver lasting improvement are their conversations with peers and direct reports.  The creation of a formal improvement agenda uses that lever to align cross functional outlook, encourage shared learning and drive engagement with a common set of improvement goals.

These are the building blocks for improvement pull.

Plan the plan workshops provide management and project teams with a forum to raise awareness, set priorities and align the Leadership agenda.  Through these sessions Lead teams achieve consistent message/pressure for change and become coaches to raise the capability and level of engagement of their direct reports.

LeanTPM Planning the Plan facilitated working sessions cover:

1. Improving Reliability and Resilience
2. Performance Management
3. Better projects faster 
4. Delivering gains from advanced technology 

The outputs from these sessions include answers that matter about:

• Strengths and weaknesses compared to respected and award winning organisations.
• Potential improvement themes and priorities
• Next steps for senior management, functional heads, front line leaders and their teams.

That provides Leaders with a vehicle to:

• Raise awareness, win hearts and minds and get buy in to those new ideas.
• Improve insight into issue/opportunity causal factors and identify next steps.
• Surface barriers (real and imagined) overcome problems, refine ideas and progress them further.
• Guide the introduction of new working practices covering.
  • Leadership and direction setting.
  • Execution of routine activities to get better every day.
  • Goals and metrics to measure progress and sustain the gains.

The next step to delivering lasting improvement is to understand the shop floor reality.  Start with practical projects in a pilot area to learn how to remove barriers and build on good practices.  Then roll out the lessons learned across the business.  

The Lean TPM Roadmap is based on the improvement journeys of organisations who have achieved step out gains in performance through systematic improvement.   Using those milestones (see below) to identify where you are on the journey and how to progress further is like standing on the shoulders of giants.

Phase 1 Improving reliability and resilience

• Break out of reactive maintenance
• Scale up for growth

Phase 2 Ratchet up performance

• Reduce minor stops and quality defects
• Deliver step out performance

Progress through each phase involves different blends of Lean and TPM tools to meet their unique challenges.

• Phase 1 involves tools to deliver stable operation and prevent the causes of downtime,
• Phase 2 involves tools to optimise asset performance and remove the causes of defects.

A journey from taming technology to ratcheting up performance. 

As each improvement milestone is approached, planning the plan activities confirm readiness to proceed and actions needed to progress further on the journey to industry leading performance. 

This typically includes train the trainer and coach the coach activities to develop policy standards, raise capabilities, provide real time feedback and guidance on how to resolve implementation issues. 

THE GAINS 

Although their are financial gains throughout the journey, the biggest gains from the LeanTPM Roadmap are achieved by actions to:

• Develop high performance front line teams.
• Release management and specialist time from day to day operations.
• Focus that time and create new skills to enhance added value and advantage.

Contact us for more information about how our training courses and coaching pathways can support your improvement team development using our contact form