The Simply Lean Pocket Guide for Construction is a great book for tools. The organization of the book presents the tools in the familiar PDCA logic using an improvement workshop 'real world' example. There are about 100 pages of templates and an easy to use glossary.

Discipline is lacking in our industry. This book shows you what to use and when to use it. But use this book along side many other influences during your lean transformation. What worries me is the lack of humanity presented. Doing a 5 Why tends to make people feel defensive. Particularly in our blame culture. There isn't a mention of this. 

That being said, I was astounded at the broad exposure one can receive from reading this book. It uses an example construction company and a Kaizen event to describe the uses of the tools. With a traditional background in Industrial Engineering (IE), it was satisfying to see all the exposure to less used tools typical in IE. 

I had a problem. A small problem, but an annoying problem. It’s been something that’s bothered me for months. Actually, now that I think more about it, it’s bothered me for years.

When people give me a business card, I like to jot a note or two on the back. The note might be the date or event where I met them, an additional phone number, or a something we talked about. From time to time I run into trouble, since the backs of some cards are a dark color, rendering my blue or black ink pen useless.

One of my colleagues shared a Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen with us the other day. It was certainly quick, as well as easy – and very effective. It was a simple organization system for his emails. He found the tip on the internet some time ago, and put it in use for himself. He set up 5 folders in his email: action, archive, hold, respond, waiting. A few times a day, after reading his new emails he moves them into these folders. Whatever doesn’t fit in any of the folder descriptions below, he puts right in the trash. Action folder - for emails that he must complete an action before responding or archiving Archive folder – for emails that he wants to save but don’t require further action Hold folder - for emails that he will need to reference at some point in the near future, such as links for meetings, etc. Respond folder – for emails that he will respond to but don’t require any action other the response Waiting – for emails that he has sent to others and is now waiting for a reply or other action I guess some time ago I had come up with a similar system – quite possibly from another tip on the internet. But my system didn’t include the same folders as his. So I copied his folders and was able to eliminate several other folders I had (that contained 1 or 2 emails each). Now my email inbox is clean and refreshing – it doesn’t overwhelm me when I open it up. I can quickly find my actions, things I need to refer to, and responses I’m waiting for. And then I started thinking…..How else could I use this idea? I have a 5-compartment desktop file sorter on my desk. I usually put things in there when I don’t really know where else to put them. I always have a lot of papers that don’t really have a home, so it gets a little bit….um….jumbled. What I decided to do was label my 5 compartments similar to the email folders. Not quite all the same labels, but close. Thanks to my colleague sharing his QnEK, my file sorter is now organized too!

In the world of blogging, it seems like there have been several posts about rewarding, incenting and motivating employees recently. In fact, just 2 blog posts ago I wrote about the very same thing as it relates to Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen.

On July 1, I ran across http://tinyurl.com/Creativity-sForbiddenFruit that addresses this as well. Matthew May refers to rewards as “Creativity’s forbidden fruit.” I think he hit the nail on the head with his post. He talks about making kaizen (continuous improvement) the daily work. I couldn’t agree more and especially when it comes to workers continually improving their own work.

I was fortunate to have worked for a company that decided they wanted to harness the power of employee creativity. With some guidance and coaching, when they rolled out the Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen program they didn’t offer “incentives” for employees’ contributions. They gave us a few months to get used to coming up with, implementing and sharing our improvements while helping us through internal and external coaching. They told us by the following spring, they would be asking each employee to implement three or more improvements each month.

•    Did they tell us that we were “expected to contribute?” Yes.
•    Did they tell us if we didn’t do them we would be fired? No.
•    Did they tell us that we would get paid for these? No.
•    Did they put up with a lot of half-baked improvements? Yes.
•    Despite getting some (or many) half-baked improvements, did they get some excellent ideas they could implement company wide? You bet they did!
•    Did many of the employees develop both personally and professionally through creating and implementing improvements on a regular basis? Yes!!

In fact, on a weekly basis the corporate office would send out an email with a few QnEK from the week that would be easily transferable. Then monthly each division would submit those that were the most impactful and had the farthest reach.

We had almost 500 employees, and the majority of us were contributing to the improvement system. And you know what? The more small improvements you make on a daily basis, the easier it becomes for you to spot the opportunity for more. Like most things in life – the more you practice, the better you become!

I’ll admit it. I’m a complete coffee addict. I never really saw much harm in drinking 6-9 cups of coffee a day…or maybe I chose to be ignorant about any harm it may cause. Until recently when my doctor informed me that 2 cups a day was fine, but 4 or more definitely was not! Faced with this conversation, I could no longer choose to be ignorant on the issue, and I had to change my ways.

To avoid cutting back so significantly, I made all kinds of excuses to myself. What was I going to do? Nobody else in my house drinks coffee, just me. The thought of making half a pot of coffee just doesn’t seem right. And what about when I want to have one cup in the morning, and my second in the afternoon? With me, the last cup in the pot is always cold. And I certainly didn’t want to make a whole pot, only to pour half of it down the drain. The batch size is just too big. How wasteful!

Thankfully, the wonderful coffee maker companies of the world have been improving the coffee making experience for their customers. Over the past couple of years, the single-serving coffee makers have become quite mainstream. My family, knowing of my plight, kindly bought me one for Christmas. This machine is great – it takes about 60 seconds to brew a fresh cup of coffee.

Now I can brew just one single cup of coffee, as I need it. I have the option of using the pre-filled disposable containers, or I can fill my own little filter with enough ground beans to make just one cup. No coffee goes to waste, and my cup is always fresh and hot! With all of my excuses gone, I have no reason not to cut back to 2 cups each day. Now I can meet the doctor's request, have my coffee just the way I like it, and not have any to waste!

Talk about a change for the better!

One of the keys of a good Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen ( QnEK) program is that we want QnEK to become a habit within the organization. We want our employees to continuously be thinking and acting on ways to make things better. This is a critical step that we can take to reduce the waste of "Unused Employee Creativity." It’s also a great skill that will keep our people taking ownership in their jobs and keep them from becoming complacent.

So, should we pay people extra for these improvement ideas?

There is a lot of debate as to whether or not financial rewards or incentives should be used to “motivate” workers to do QnEK. I’m a firm believer that we don’t need to financially incent people to do QnEK for a few different reasons. I mean sure, it’s fun to give out a prize or two, and it’s always necessary to show appreciation. A sincere “Thank you, we’re going to share that improvement with other projects!” should more than suffice. But I’m talking about more significant incentives than those.

•    Should the fact that someone is making their own job safer, easier or more interesting be incentive enough to keep coming up with improvements?
•    This program helps people take ownership in their work. Does financially rewarding them extra to take the ownership contradict the whole idea of ownership?
•    What I’ve seen happen all too many times, in many different environments, is that when you start offering financial incentives to people for something that is supposed to be part of their job, the second you stop offering the rewards, they stop doing that part of the job! This is counterproductive to building a habit within the organization.

I would love to hear some additional thoughts on this – I know they are out there!

You know that when you begin looking at everything during the course of your day as a kaizen opportunity that you are well on your way on the lean journey.

I was washing dishes by hand last night due to a mechanical issue with the dishwasher. During the course of the activity I started to think about the cycle of using and cleaning dishes. The dishwasher is a batch process. Dishes are used then placed in the dishwasher. Chances are the dishes sit there waiting for the drawers to become full of dirty dishes and then the dishwasher is run. This requires a certain amount of clean dishes, pots, pans, silverware and cooking utensils in inventory so that you can eat multiple meals while operating the machine efficiently. All this stuff takes up a lot of kitchen space!

As I was scrubbing I thought how washing dishes by hand, essentially utilizing a small batch process, would be lean and what the possible impact would be. If the dishes were washed every meal, I would really only need two settings (for my wife and I) plus some versatile pots and pans and one of each of the most commonly used cooking utensils. However, I would need an inventory buffer sized to accommodate extraordinary events like parties. Still, the amount of dishes required would be greatly reduced moving to a small batch process.