A major component of continuous improvement is the elimination of waste. WAste is the opposite of value. Value added activities are ones that the customer wants and wants to pay for. Activities classified as waste include excess motion, transportation, rework, inventory, over production, over processing, and waiting.
Sometimes people think about continuous improvement and images of heartless, soulless consultants who want to cut and slash come to mind. Try applying lean/kaizen, etc. at camp and it's worse sometimes. People don't want to hear it. It's a ministry, not a business. My answer to that is simple - use everything to the glory of God - which means using our resources wisely - which means being a good steward - which, to me, means eliminating waste.
Continuous improvement/elimination of waste happens at camp, we just don't call it that and we don't live and breath that culture. For example - for as long as I can remember the bikes and the bike repair area have been about 200 yards apart. Today, we've eliminated that waste by putting a bike hospital in the bike area, posting standard signs for repairs and provided the pathway for people to get bikes fixed.
We eliminated excess motion, transportation, waiting (the bikes get fixed and back into use faster) and we did not eliminate an OUNCE of fun! By brining the problem to the surface and the tools to the point of use we are able to serve the camp better and improve our process.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Daily Team Meetings
Sorry it's been a couple weeks. A few posts in short order.
1. I never applied Visual Management to the facilitator shirts. I'm finding that in the camp culture "first order" problem solving (stopping at containment measures) is the modus operandi. It's frustrating but a challenge. By the end of the summer I hope to start using 5'why root cause analysis on problems.
2. Daily Team Meetings - Daily meetings are an integral component of kaizen. At the daily meeting the culture of mutual trust and respect is promoted, problems are identified and discussed and important problems flow up the chain of command.
For daily meetings to be successful people need to understand their responsibility for safety, quality, productivity, human development and cost. They must also believe that raising problems is a good thing, understand problem solving and problem selection (bringing solved problems and selecting the right ones to pass up makes for a more effective daily meeting). The daily meeting is also supported by a team board.
The camp culture is not very performance driven. Performance is important but we don't think about it as such. It makes the application of the daily meeting more difficult in my mind. Here's what we're doing:
At 7:30 our staff meets in teams. At 8:00 our staff meets as a whole for things like announcements, devotions, music, getting fired up for the day. At 8:30 I meet with my team leaders and at 12:00 the leadership team meets.
The pluses - communication is good, my teams feel respected and I feel like I have the pulse of camp.
The minuses - there's not a lot of specific problems or problem solving being done and the leadership meeting is out of span. There are some times 15 people there with very different interests. If I were to re stack it, I'd take the summer only leaders and have them meet with the full time person that it makes sense to meet with. The program and men's and women's directors with the camp director, the cit directors with facilities or the camp director and the conference center programs with the conference center director. THen, I'd have all the full time directors meet so that they can discuss the top level agenda. As it is, the conversations veer off so that when we're talking about high level stuff, half the group is unengaged.
It's not all bad, in fact, its very good, but remember -every day little improvements!
1. I never applied Visual Management to the facilitator shirts. I'm finding that in the camp culture "first order" problem solving (stopping at containment measures) is the modus operandi. It's frustrating but a challenge. By the end of the summer I hope to start using 5'why root cause analysis on problems.
2. Daily Team Meetings - Daily meetings are an integral component of kaizen. At the daily meeting the culture of mutual trust and respect is promoted, problems are identified and discussed and important problems flow up the chain of command.
For daily meetings to be successful people need to understand their responsibility for safety, quality, productivity, human development and cost. They must also believe that raising problems is a good thing, understand problem solving and problem selection (bringing solved problems and selecting the right ones to pass up makes for a more effective daily meeting). The daily meeting is also supported by a team board.
The camp culture is not very performance driven. Performance is important but we don't think about it as such. It makes the application of the daily meeting more difficult in my mind. Here's what we're doing:
At 7:30 our staff meets in teams. At 8:00 our staff meets as a whole for things like announcements, devotions, music, getting fired up for the day. At 8:30 I meet with my team leaders and at 12:00 the leadership team meets.
The pluses - communication is good, my teams feel respected and I feel like I have the pulse of camp.
The minuses - there's not a lot of specific problems or problem solving being done and the leadership meeting is out of span. There are some times 15 people there with very different interests. If I were to re stack it, I'd take the summer only leaders and have them meet with the full time person that it makes sense to meet with. The program and men's and women's directors with the camp director, the cit directors with facilities or the camp director and the conference center programs with the conference center director. THen, I'd have all the full time directors meet so that they can discuss the top level agenda. As it is, the conversations veer off so that when we're talking about high level stuff, half the group is unengaged.
It's not all bad, in fact, its very good, but remember -every day little improvements!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Foundations of Improvement
In my life as a continuous improvement coach there were two things that I learned about process improvement that I'd like to share.
1. The process you're improving have people that work in them with a culture they live by
2. Process improvement for the sake of improvement can be destructive to culture
Here's what I mean: I like to make improvement. I like to improve my own processes and I like to help people improve theirs. I know that it's good for me and for other people to improve their processes but not everyone agrees with me. Some people are so focused on making the process happen that they don't take time to improve. Sometimes people don't think you can make improvement. Some people have no idea that their process needs to be improved.
I call these things cultural roadblocks. When you take the map of a current culture, especially if it is not open for improvement to process/change, then how can you improve the process? If your goal is simply to make improvement then your square peg won't fit the round hole. You can't force improvement on people and expect it to reap the harvest that you want.
So, before you go on to improve a process you need to make some cultural adjustments/interactions. It's important to understand and respect the culture you encounter so that you can get the cultural conditions right for improvements to take hold.
So, let's make the camp connection: Camp is a great place where people focus on the culture/community. There is a lot of talk about respect and trust and loving one another and growing together. There is very little talk about process improvement.
Let me give you an example. The other day I was to take our portable team building program to an event about 45 miles away, meet two facilitators and execute a half day program for 50-60 people. The program turned out really great and the people. Before I left I was supposed to grab two additional camp collared shirts for the other staff members. The night before the director had said that the dirty ones needed to be washed. The housekeeper picked them up and he asked what are you doing with them and she said washing them. Here's the rub, in the morning they were in the washer, not dried. How did the this happen? The key piece of information - that we needed them the next day - was left out. At camp, we solve the problem by using non official camp shirts instead of official ones.
No harm? A quality/professionalism problem, but no real harm. The real harm is that communication processes are broken. What if there were never a lack of shirts? (true north - the ideal - always have what you need) What I want to do is fix that process. I want to create a visual signal that says - wash these today - with a level set low enough that we never run out but with enough time for them to get through the process.
Here's problem number two - I don't own the process. So, I have to get a director who is working on major issues to help me solve this one small problem? Maybe, or maybe I need to understand this directors culture and figure out if there's a way to keep the problem from coming back. Even though he doesn't focus on process improvement the way I do - I can both respect his culture and work on the problem.
I'll report back and let you know how it goes.
1. The process you're improving have people that work in them with a culture they live by
2. Process improvement for the sake of improvement can be destructive to culture
Here's what I mean: I like to make improvement. I like to improve my own processes and I like to help people improve theirs. I know that it's good for me and for other people to improve their processes but not everyone agrees with me. Some people are so focused on making the process happen that they don't take time to improve. Sometimes people don't think you can make improvement. Some people have no idea that their process needs to be improved.
I call these things cultural roadblocks. When you take the map of a current culture, especially if it is not open for improvement to process/change, then how can you improve the process? If your goal is simply to make improvement then your square peg won't fit the round hole. You can't force improvement on people and expect it to reap the harvest that you want.
So, before you go on to improve a process you need to make some cultural adjustments/interactions. It's important to understand and respect the culture you encounter so that you can get the cultural conditions right for improvements to take hold.
So, let's make the camp connection: Camp is a great place where people focus on the culture/community. There is a lot of talk about respect and trust and loving one another and growing together. There is very little talk about process improvement.
Let me give you an example. The other day I was to take our portable team building program to an event about 45 miles away, meet two facilitators and execute a half day program for 50-60 people. The program turned out really great and the people. Before I left I was supposed to grab two additional camp collared shirts for the other staff members. The night before the director had said that the dirty ones needed to be washed. The housekeeper picked them up and he asked what are you doing with them and she said washing them. Here's the rub, in the morning they were in the washer, not dried. How did the this happen? The key piece of information - that we needed them the next day - was left out. At camp, we solve the problem by using non official camp shirts instead of official ones.
No harm? A quality/professionalism problem, but no real harm. The real harm is that communication processes are broken. What if there were never a lack of shirts? (true north - the ideal - always have what you need) What I want to do is fix that process. I want to create a visual signal that says - wash these today - with a level set low enough that we never run out but with enough time for them to get through the process.
Here's problem number two - I don't own the process. So, I have to get a director who is working on major issues to help me solve this one small problem? Maybe, or maybe I need to understand this directors culture and figure out if there's a way to keep the problem from coming back. Even though he doesn't focus on process improvement the way I do - I can both respect his culture and work on the problem.
I'll report back and let you know how it goes.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Welcome to CAMP
Hey, my name's Allan and I'm a manufacturing/healthcare training consultant with a Christian Thought degree. I specialize in Team Building, Leadership Development, and Kaizen/Continuous Process Improvement/Toyota Production System/Lean. I'm going to graduate school in the fall and this summer ... I'm going to CAMP!
I'll be working for a Christian camp and conference center in rural Western, PA. My job is to supervise the men's staff and male campers through discipline and discipleship. Shhhh ... don't tell anyone but I'm also going to attempt to apply the principles and tools of continuous improvement to my work here.
If you know kaizen and don't know camp read this, and this, and this!
If you know camp and not kaizen, read this, and this, and this!
This blog will, hopefully, chronicle my journey this summer and draw out some important lessons in the application of the tools of business and enterprise to the heart and soul of summer camp ministry and hopefully, the other way around too!
Enjoy!
I'll be working for a Christian camp and conference center in rural Western, PA. My job is to supervise the men's staff and male campers through discipline and discipleship. Shhhh ... don't tell anyone but I'm also going to attempt to apply the principles and tools of continuous improvement to my work here.
If you know kaizen and don't know camp read this, and this, and this!
If you know camp and not kaizen, read this, and this, and this!
This blog will, hopefully, chronicle my journey this summer and draw out some important lessons in the application of the tools of business and enterprise to the heart and soul of summer camp ministry and hopefully, the other way around too!
Enjoy!
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