Lean On-Line Courses Overview

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The Lean Thinking Principles are reaching out into almost every business sector, providing exceptional improvements wherever applied.

Today, during these tough times we need to apply lean principles and practices to processes, systems, products and services to reduce waste and maximise value. 

The Lean Thinking Principles are relatively the same for all business sectors. The application and tools applied however should be tailored to the uniqueness of each business type, strategy, culture, products, services and customer base.

 The chart below gives you some idea of the commonality of lean thinking across three distinctly different sectors.

The “Lean Doing” (Implementation) stage does require a unique strategic application of lean tools and techniques.

You may not be a factory, but I am sure you are still experts in:

• Functional processing
• Batching
• Queuing
• Duplication 
• Lack of coordination
• Functional performance

Today in business, we must have “Optimised efficiency” driving customer value

• Optimise the existing technology before making additional investments
• Customer expectations and future needs drive technology and process change
• Customer’s expectations will change and will become more unique, therefore you must have the capacity to be agile and flexible in responsiveness

   

The Lean On-Line suite of courses

Lean Bookstore            Free Downloads

Our recommended approach is for each student to start with Lean Principles and Practices

Course topics

5S Orderliness and Organised

 
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

 
Kaizen Blitz (& Event)

A rapid examining of the workplace current practices, measures and systems for waste and non value adding work, then change to a future state that eliminates most of the non value added activity, inventory and devise most appropriate visual performance indicators. The most direct, uninterrupted route from order to delivery.

Lean Health

Lean Manufacturing

Lean Office

We have come from an automotive manufacturing background, and more recently have been involved in consulting work, training and implementing Lean into Health, Government, Financial institutions and general office. As a consequence, we have developed specific training for change agents and staff to implement Lean and transform processes in hospitals, manufacturing and offices, including financial institutions, government services and education.

Overview of Lean Tools & Techniques

This course introduces many of the Lean Tools and their application to the student. It outlines where they are used and best application approaches for each. It does not offer detailed application training but serves to provide an awareness of the LEAN TOOLBOX and where you might need to use them.

Detailed training per tool is also offered in:
5S - Process Mapping - Value Stream Mapping (VSM) - Visual Management - Performance Measurement - Effective Meetings - Kaizen Events and Kaizen Blitz - Multi Skilling - OH&S – Quality - Just in Time (JIT) – Kanban - Takt Time and Work balancing - Heijunka (Work leveling) - Standardised Work - A3 Reporting - Quality Planning - Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA) - Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) - Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) - Quick Change Over (SMED) - Corrective Action & Problem Solving - Andon systems - Poka Yoke (Mistake Proofing) – Autonomation - Project Management

Process Activity (PAM) and Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

This course covers process mapping in detail. Process mapping is imperative and a lead tool in any Lean or other improvement program. VSM is a management planning tool for outlining the current state and for communicating the future state intent. VSM outlines larger stepped improvement for business or departmental transformation, mapping both the value stream as products or services are processed and the information flow.

PAM is highly detailed mapping, high lighting non value added work for small step improvement by shop floor employees. These are must have tools and skills, if you want sustainable continuous improvement.

Standardised Work

All too often we notice employees and staff carrying out the same function or task differently to each other. Different shift managers and employees having their own way of doing things some are good and some are quite bad work practices by comparison and there is very little consistency overall.

Inconsistent work leads to inconsistent results.

We can have the very best people working with poor processes and still get inconsistent results.

What we need is good consistent processes operated in a uniform way by focused employees for consistent results.

Standardisation of good work provides a foundation for:

• Consistency
• Improvement
• Core competency
• For training development & outcomes

The training provided for this essential Lean Element, includes standardising good work practice (including OH&S, Quality, Environmental, JIT and output), work instructions, inventory, workflow, documents and measurement.

Takt Time, Kanban & Work Balancing

To have your processing activity pulled by customer demand whilst maintaining the lowest inventory and highest utilisation of employees and equipment possible, you will need to understand Takt time, Just in Time (JIT) management, the current cycle times and be able to apply the most effective work balance and Kanban systems.

This training course will provide the student with the ability to calculate Takt Times, produce work balance charts and design Kanban systems for application in the work place. A prerequisite for this course is Work Flow & Just in Time Processing (JIT).

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Organisations such as ours want to maximise up time for plant, software, information systems and machinery for obvious reasons relating to customer quality, cost and delivery time. Lean philosophy embraces preventative or autonomous maintenance to eliminate the waste involved in equipment down time. Basically when we have malfunctioning processes in a lean business, we stop deliveries very quickly (due to the lack of large inventories and queues). Secondly, the emergency maintenance required in order to get going again usually is band-aid, and not sufficient to prevent future malfunction. Total productive maintenance is about getting everyone involved in maintaining processes within their capacity and competency. This is a must do course for maintenance staff, team leaders and managers as it brings together maintainers and users, creating an ownership in the best combination of daily use (removal of abuse) and daily, weekly etc process failure prevention activities. 5S is a good lead into this training course.

Visual Management

How would we know where to go without visual management?

Visual management is a concept of installing essential information as close to the point of use as possible. Engaging the workforce is the most powerful tool in business process improvement and visual management is one of the most powerful tools in gaining engagement.

Bring the work and information to the worker; not the worker to the information or work as this is both costly and wasteful.

Visual management provides us with the necessary information and process input requirements at the point of use by providing:

• Minimum, maximum storage levels
• Re-fill, re-order points and Kanban signals
• Right, wrong check information
• instructions and standardised work
• Optimum working conditions like pressure, temperature, speed, torque etc
• Performance measurement
• Short interval controls

Visual management techniques go well beyond housekeeping, providing real time information feedback regarding performance status. As an example of visual management is the cricket or other sport scoreboards, providing up to date individual performance and team overall performance as well as elapsed time in Lean Practice these are called “Andon Systems.” Andon systems generate and maintain employee interest, challenging them with unambiguous feedback on performance.

Visual systems are a valuable tool in the workplace and even in the most basic terms can provide improvement in output, quality, OH&S and morale. It is recommended you complete 5S training before this course.