Page 1 of 2
Journey
My name is Allan Kempert and I’m the Continuous Improvement Coordinator at a manufacturing facility in Ontario Canada. In 2003, I researched and guided the implementation of a simple IDEA process, which is named Quick & Easy Kaizen.
I was first introduced to Quick & Easy Kaizen through Don Dewar of QCI International. Don’s company had been sending me a newsletter which was touting the benefits of implementing an IDEA process, based on a book by Norman Bodek and Bunji Tozawa, titled The Idea Generator, Quick and Easy Kaizen. At first I thought, “oh yeah, another flavour of the month process to help save us”. However, I purchased the book and soon realized that this truly was a process that was going to save us.
Prior to implementing the IDEA process, our company was running a suggestion process and I recognized that it needed a boost. I appreciate the intent of a suggestion process, which in most cases, aims for cost savings. However the IDEA process that I was researching focused on the individual and their needs (companies benefit from meeting their employees needs). As the book I was studying pointed out, according to Maslow’s Motivational Theory, everyone has needs and at the top level of everyone’s hierarchy of human needs, is Self Actualization. As self-actualization depicts, people want the opportunity to create their own identity, to be who they were meant to be, to grow and act out (pretty deep). Quick & Easy Kaizen allows this to happen.
Here is what I feel are the significant differences between a SUGGESTION process and an IDEA process;
SUGGESTION
Employee attempts to complete a long-winded form, submits to a committee that meets infrequently. They disposition it either as approved, squashed or needs further study. There is limited follow-up. The employee complains because he or she doesn’t receive feedback or due to nothing getting done. In most cases, participation by the employee is nil.
IDEA
The employee completes a simple form that describes the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ effect of the improvement idea, receives approval from the leader and the employee implements or coordinates the implementation. Participation by employee is considerable.
Part of our implementation involved benchmarking against a company who was having success with the IDEA process. My theory for benchmarking is, “learn from the mistakes of others because we certainly don’t have all the time in the world to make them ourselves. After completing the benchmarking, the next step was to set up a pilot of the IDEA process in my department of 3 people.
After the pilot, it was time to implement the proces across the company. To ensure each department in the company had a leader in the process, an implementation team of 12 people was assembled to look at problems with traditional suggestion processes, causes and solutions. The solutions were based on the Quick & Easy Kaizen book and the benchmarking done at another company.
A PowerPoint presentation was developed and everyone in the company was trained to the new IDEA process. In fact, the training involved encouraging people to put forward IDEAS during the training session. This resulted in excess of 100 IDEAS from 104 employees.
After 4 months, the implementation team regrouped and performed an effectiveness review of the IDEA process. The team developed questions and asked participants in the process as well as non-participants questions pertaining to the process. This helped to improve the process. What really stood out to the team was that by asking people to make their jobs easier (to meet their needs), which was the main focus at the on set of the process, people commented that they felt empowered, listened to, like someone cared, happy about coming to work, no longer parking their brains at the door etc. The team also noted that the IDEAS coming in were related to not only making peoples jobs easier but were also related to safety, set-up, 5S and cost savings. I like to point to a statement that explains this. MahatmaGandhi stated, "take care of the MEANSand the ENDS will take care of themselves".
…...continued
Here is an example of an IDEA that an employee put forward and implemented;
BEFORE IMPROVEMENT
Cottonragsare used to clean lubricant off machines, parts and operators hands. Employees collect rags in a fireproof can and periodically during the week, will come to a central location in the plant to count out their rags, one by one. One operator submitted and had approved an IDEA to put a small counter on his fireproof can. As he was putting rags into the can, he simply toggled off how many rags went into the can. When he went to drop off the rags at the central location, all he had to do was dump the rags.
I was reading the Quick & Easy Kaizen board, where all IDEAS are posted for sharing, and read about the counter idea. I encouraged an employee to speak to the person in charge of the recycling process for the rags and investigate why there was a need to count the rags at all.
It turns out that approximately 15 years prior, the supplier of the rags was the only one keeping track of the rag counts and there were discrepancies. Part of the solution was to have both parties count the rags for a period of time to determine what was happening. However, the counting continued from then on.
AFTER IMPROVEMENT
All operators in the plant have been asked to discontinue counting rags.
EFFECT
Operator’s jobs are easier and from one IDEA to make an operator’s job easier by adding a counter to his can, the company has uncovered in excess of150 hours per year to be more productive.
Note: some people may be so embarrassed that such a miscommunication would happen that they might let a sleeping dog lie or not reveal to other companies what happened. However, I say, "lets expose the waste without pointing fingers, reap the reward and learn from our mistakes as the only true mistakes are those which we don't learn from".
The final numbers for the IDEA process are noted below and are compared to the numbers from the suggestion process;
Suggestion Process(12 month period - 2003) / IDEA Process
(8.5 month period – program started mid March 2004)
112 Suggestions /
700 IDEAS
50% Participation – mostly Managers and Supervisors / 95% participation – participation from across the company)Two of the IDEAS were tracked for cost savings (to prove a point). The IDEAS took 2 hours to implement and generated labour savings ofapproximately $6,000.00.
Note to those who read this journey;
· As noted above, the book that laid out how to run the IDEA process is The Idea Generator; Quick and Easy Kaizen (Norman Bodek and Bunji Tozawa). I also purchased 12 copies of The Idea Generator; Quick and Easy Kaizen WORKBOOK. This book is an easier read and was read by the implementation team and Leaders who wanted to get the “jist” of the process.
· These books can be purchased wherever you choose but I highly recommend picking them up from Don Dewar at QCI International. Don led me to these books through his newsletter called Timely Tips for Teams and also provided me with a lead on a company to benchmark against. I could have picked these books up elsewhere but my thinking is this; companies like Amazon are just sellers of these books, whereas Don not only sells these books but has committed a great deal to the efforts of Quality, Productivity, Lean etc.
· You can contact Don at . Tell him Allan Kempert sent you (ask to receive his Timely Tips for Teams newsletter. I’m sure you will pull something useful out of it. It comes out monthly).
If you have any questions on your IDEA journey, please don’t hesitate to contact me at .
Regards,
Allan