Kaizen blitz events

Kaizen blitz events are team-based events that take advantage of the power of teamwork. Teams bring diversity in skills, thought, and knowledge. Inviting individuals to join the team should be based on some underlying reasoning. Some examples include ... 

This schedule overview is a rough draft. To provide a clearer understanding of the facilitation steps and the reasoning behind them, I will review the process map and provide more detail as if this were a lean safety kaizen blitz event. 

Obviously, that was many years ago, but I would like to be able to go back in time and facilitate a kaizen blitz event to reduce the risks associated with that job. I am sure the kaizen team would have experimented with new layouts that would position the pallet closer to the spool discharge point, small roller dollies or hoists to transport the spools, protective shin guards, and many other ideas to make the task both safer, easier, and, therefore, faster. One thing I understand for sure is that I cannot change the past, but... 

Hold safety focused kaizen blitz events. 

Safety-focused kaizen blitz events with wrap-up meetings to celebrate safety gains... 

Facilitate a defined number of safety kaizen blitz events annually. 

Numbef of job safety analyses OSAs) completed Job safety analysis exercises are minikaizen events. By targeting a number of them in a period, e.g., 20 JSA events in 2010, a company will guarantee employee engagement and improvement of the safety program. A side benefit of JSAs and safety kaizen blitz events is that the team members identify numerous safety improvements through their efforts. In our facility, those same people would submit the safety improvements for approval, based on the program described in the last section, and receive their rewards. 

The traditional kaizen blitz, used to reduce business process cycle times, has long been criticized because the improvements or gains made during kaizen events often are not sustained. To those critics I say, so what Mature Lean thinkers understand that for a business to become Lean it must impact how people think, act, and interact. This cultural or people side of Lean is the difficult row to hoe on anyone s Lean journey. When businesses hold multiple kaizen blitz events a week, they are doing so to improve business process cycle times and to win the hearts of their employees. They understand the biggest benefit of any kaizen event is not the process you improve—it is the minds you change. 

Hourly employees, those who do the real hard work for a business s customers and are the least empowered employees in any business, need to understand how Lean thinking benefits each of them individually as well as the business. Engaging your employees in kaizen blitz events that... 

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