Observe Analyze Improve
Large Biotech Company

Situation: Manufacturing wanted to increase staff ability to observe the details of their process in order to make break through improvements in cost, productivity, quality, ergonomics and lead time. The team was already well trained with consistent quality results and meeting current performance metrics, but realized they could improve their current performance metrics. Watch what happened!

Task:  The task was to deliver motivating and effective training on the production floor to improve these metrics and engage the staff in the process of continuous improvement. This was considered important due to competition, cost pressure, safety and quality requirements remaining a high priority. The site remains committed to developing staff and advancing lean to uncover improvement opportunities including latent safety & quality risks.

Execution:   

  • Steve developed a new process called “Observe Analyze and Improve” and implemented this with 18 managers across four shifts. The managers were trained on the “7 Wastes” and how to identify them in the work area.  
  • OBSERVE: He coached the managers one on one in their work area on the details of what was actually going on at each step of their process and those observations were documented. They began to see the details causing workflow  interruptions that they hadn’t ever noticed before. Maybe this happens at your work place.
  • ANALYZE: Back at their desk, the managers were shown how to prioritize the most impactful observations by identifying both the size of the potential benefit of each observation and also the difficulty of implementing the corrective action.
  • IMPROVE: The final step was to create an action plan for the prioritized opportunities.  These action plans used lean tools to eliminate motion waste, waiting waste, over processing, transportation and inventory issues. YES, it really works.  The results were tracked weekly and discussed with the team often in a “lessons learned” format.

Results: The coaching enabled the 18 managers to effectively observe the process details on the floor. The group achieved a reduction of 50,000 annual hours of non-valuing adding work activity.  This is equivalent to 25 headcount that could be “redeployed to where they were needed more” in the organization. This depended on mapping the processes, conducting highly effective Gemba walks and eliminating the 7 Wastes. After I moved on to the next project, that staff eliminated another 50,000 labor hours on their own, proving sustainability. I developed a thorough playbook on executing this process. Contact  Steve about doing this at your facility for breakthrough results.