Program Outline

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DAY One
Traditional performance measures

9:00 − 10:30 / The Failure of ‘Traditional’ Performance Management:

  • Why traditional performance measurement including customer/employee satisfaction surveys fail to indicate what needs to change, and in particular do not highlight in-process waste.

The Strategic Imperative (in the Industrial vs Knowledge Economy):

  • Focus on Product, Inventory, Bottom Line and Cash Flow.
  • Focus on Service and Customer Intimacy, Innovation and Operational Excellence

Case discussion: Impact of Organisational Design and Culture

  • Command-and-Control vs Collaborate-and-Cultivate
  • Participants’ own experiences

Key Lessons:

  • Strategic goals (and targets) can be defined as a combination of Customer Intimacy, Innovation, and Operational Excellence.
  • Organisational culture and design affects the extent to which people in the organisation “buy in” to the strategic goals.

10:30 − 10:45 / Break

10:45 − 12:30 / LEAN MANAGEMENT: AN INTRODUCTION

The principles of Lean Management were first conceived and developed at Toyota Motor Company. It considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, “value” is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.

Essentially, Lean Management is centered on preserving value with less work (and thus less cost).

The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to one the world’s largest automakers, has focused attention on how it has achieved this success. Over the past decade, the principles and practices of Lean Management steadily find their way into all manner of businesses and organisations (including public sector and not-for-profit organisations). Small and medium sized enterprises, too, can find significant benefits from applying its principles and practices.

Interactive exercise: Supply Chain Optimisation

Rather than presenting theory, this interactive exercise involving all participants will quickly demonstrate:

  • The significance of (often hidden) ‘waste’ in business processes;
  • The importance of tracing the flow of a business process;
  • The relation between time and waste: the time it takes for errors to show up, and the lead time to delivery;
  • The amount (and cost) of inventory in the system;
  • The amount of nervous energy that works counterproductive, and results in constant “fire-fighting”;
  • The lack of control or overview over what’s happening.

12:30 − 13:30  / LUNCH

13:30 − 15:30   / LEAN MANAGEMENT: AN INTRODUCTION

Interactive exercise: Supply Chain Optimisation (continued)

 

Possible solutions will be developed and implemented, demonstrating how quickly significant improvements in performance (by elimination of waste) can be achieved through team discussion and collaboration.

The basic principles of Lean Management will thus be experienced, demonstrated and discussed.

15:30 − 15:45  / Break

15:45 − 16:30  /  Summarising: Lean Management in 5 steps

  • Streamlining the Value Stream: learning how to use value stream maps to create macro-level workflows and micro-process workflows.
  • Workplace Organisation – the 5 S’s: understanding how the 5 S’s establish a structured approach for storing materials, supplies, and equipment in work areas.
  • Set-up Reduction: Investigating how to cut down set-up & change-over times and how important fast set-ups are to lean efforts.
  • Visual Workplace: See how visual controls and visual displays reinforce and enhance a lean effort.
  • PDCA – continuous improvement: Exploring the options for keeping a lean effort viable and vital.

16:30 − 17:30  /  Application of these 5 steps to the participants’ own situation

preparation and presentation of an action plan for implementation

 

 

DAY Two

9:00 − 10:45  /  TOWARDS A MINDSET FOR OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE  (cont’d)

The previous exercises demonstrated the power of a working team discussing together the issues they faced throughout a supply chain, and collaborating towards a better work process. However, while this seems self-evident, it does require a certain mindset and attitude towards problem solving that is absent in most organisational cultures: an inclination towards collaboration.

A number of game scenarios will demonstrate how people – even colleagues within one and the same company/organisation – quickly revert to ‘playing games’ with (and against) each other, even when they individually have the best of intentions towards achieving clearly defined goals. This will demonstrate how narrow and individual goals, strategies and tactics are mostly short-term focused and become sub-optimal over a longer term; and how collaboration can drive sustainable performance.

The remainder of the first day, and part of the second day will be devoted to preparing the participants for introducing the requisite mindset and attitudes for collaboration in their own organisations, since this is indispensible before operational excellence and lean management practices may be introduced.

A Prisoner’s Dilemma: why people love to ‘win’, and end up losing

  • Finite vs Infinite Games.
  • Short term gains vs Long term gains.
  • The importance of communication in relationships, and how good intentions may not always be perceived as such

Team Models

  • Survey of prevailing organisational culture at the participants’ companies; implications of ‘Soft’ vs ‘Command & Control’ vs ‘Commitment’ cultures on operational performance.

10:45 − 11:00  /  Break

11:00 − 12:00  /  LEAN MANAGEMENT IN  5 EASY STEPS

Building Towers: getting to see the other side

  • The need for, and power of productive conversation, given different viewpoints on the same ‘tower’ (i.e. situation).
  • The pitfalls of making assumptions about what others do (and why they do it).

Key Lessons:

  • Operational excellence can only be achieved when the people in organisations work productively towards joint objectives, with positive intent and for mutual benefit.
  • Individuals in organisations must first learn to collaborate.

12:00 – 13:00 / Lunch

13:00 − 16:30  /  Alignment: alternative decision making process in complex situations where bottom-up support is important

  • How consensus or even majority agreement result in inevitable waste caused by endless discussion.
  • How alignment does not require agreement.
  • The power of taking small steps forward, towards a common objective.

Work Process Improvement

  • The difficulty of letting go of preconceptions and ‘old ways of doing things’.
  • How to discuss, in a positive manner, poor or inadequate performance, with a view to collaborative improvement.
  • Working with challenges and stretch goals.

Key Lessons:

  • Lean Management and Operational Excellence are reached through alignment: a series of small improvements together yielding breakthrough results.
  • Alignment is reached through taking small steps forward towards a common objective.
  • Alignment requires trust, and a willingness to “have a go”.

16:30 − 16:45  /  Break

16:45 − 17:30  /  LESSONS LEARNED & APPLICATION TO OWN WORKING ENVIRONMENTS

  • hotels & hospitality
  • estate agencies & property development companies
  • manufacturing companies

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