JWI 550 Strayer University Wk 5 Development of Kaizen and Work out Events Questions
answer the two peers below to the following question:Applying Lean in Your OrganizationThis week, you learned how Lean is used to reduce inventory, eliminate waste, and improve processes. In preparation for Course Project Part B, answer the questions below. Be sure to include specific references to this week’s course materials to support your response.Now that you have completed your value stream assignment, what are some opportunities in your value stream where a Work-Out or Kaizen event can be applied?Which Lean tools would be most useful in these events?What challenges have you seen, or anticipate, in deploying Lean in your industry? How would you address those challenges?Peer #1Lauren Dioses RE: Week 5 DiscussionCOLLAPSE Now that you have completed your value stream assignment, what are some opportunities in your value stream where a Work-Out or Kaizen event can be applied?A Kaizen event is loosely translated to "a change for the better" or simply put as an improvement (1). At GE, they coined the name Work-out to describe the process of having a collaborative approach of bringing employees together to develop rapid, lasting improvements in process performance (2). Jack Welch commented on the process and explained that trusting the opinions of employees is the best way to improve a business procedure (2). My VSM was based on the current student enrollment process at my university. Opportunities where Kaizen events can be applied are in our outreach methods, urgency for enrollment, and method of payment collection.Which Lean tools would be most useful in these events?A value stream map was extremely helpful in this process. Seeing a visual representation of where we have bottlenecks makes it easier to see what can be improved. Additionally, another VSM map can be done for the opportunities I mentioned above. Another tool that would be very useful is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). OEE determines how much of the planned production time is actually productive (3). This process would highlight how Coaches as myself spend a lot of time in the "other tasks as required" job description. During an outreach for enrollment, a student can express issues in their current classes, financial aid questions, or the need for advisement. All those questions can be answered by me and are also my duties. In the sense of productivity for enrollment, it would be found I was not productive in my outreach attempt. This goes back to last week in having contradicting metrics and KPI's.
What challenges have you seen, or anticipate, in deploying Lean in your industry? How would you address those challenges?There can be a disconnect from employees to upper-level management who have the power to make the changes. A work-out would be beneficial in this case as it is pertinent to make changes based on how the processes actually run instead of based on how they should. At the end of the day, students must be assisted. It can put future tasks, like enrollment, on the back burner. In current value stream maps, there's no account for this. A work-out would surely bring to light the challenges of expectations.
Lauren DiosesReferences1. Richard Chua. 2018. Operational Excellence Foundations. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/operational-exce...2. Don Harris. n/a. WORK-OUT: THE MOST POWERFUL PROCESS IMPROVEMENT TOOL. https://www.isixsigma.com/new-to-six-sigma/roles-r...3. Purdue. 2020. Lean Tools and Principles and Their Applications. https://www.purdue.edu/leansixsigmaonline/blog/lea...Peer #2Peter A RE: Week 5 DiscussionCOLLAPSEHello Class,Now that you have completed your value stream assignment, what are some opportunities in your value stream where a Work-Out or Kaizen event can be applied?Based on my value stream assignment, we can see a Work-Out can take place in Processing Payment section, as well as the beginning of the Telesales process of discussing solutions. According to Taiichi Ohno’s 7 types of waste, waiting can lead to the “inability to process work because people are waiting for other people” (1). When the sales process requires additional support from other departments like customer service or technical support, the wait times can range between 2 minutes to possibly hours. As for processing payment, we also go through system errors and defects, which leads to “rework because it was not done right the first time” (1).Which Lean tools would be most useful in these events?The TIMWOODS acronym that Taiichi Ohno laid out is a very useful tool in these types of events. The TIMWOODS tool consists of 8 types of waste to consider when operating on an everyday basis. When relating to Telesales in a work-at-home situation, Transportation. Motion, and overproduction waste are not applicable. Other wastes like Inventory, Waiting, Overprocessing, and Defects are valuable factors to consider in the role. By understanding how to apply the TIMWOODS acronym to my daily operations, lean can eliminate “waste to improve efficiency, flow, and speed” (2).What challenges have you seen, or anticipate, in deploying Lean in your industry? How would you address those challenges?With the recent monthly meeting for my team, my manager’s way of deploying Lean in our operations is to reduce the average handle time of our customers. The target he wants to set for us is an average handle time of 500 seconds or less. By shaving down the handle time per call, the sales reps can go through more customers throughout the day. The only challenge, however, is how would we maximize our efforts in sales, but have it completed in such a shorter time frame?A way to address this challenge is to refer to the TIM WOODS acronym. While each sales rep has their own style of selling, the manager can take the time to narrow down which areas in the acronym are considered most wasteful in our transactions. While some reps take the most time searching up inventory for items, other reps may be waiting too long to get connected to a different department instead of just advising their guest to follow up a different time. By eliminating the types of waste in an individual standpoint, the overall handle time as a team will reduce greatly.Thank you,Peter AReferences:JWI550 Week 5 Lecture NotesChua, Richard. LinkedIn Learning. Operational Excellence Foundations. “Lean Principles”. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/operational-exce...