Author Archives: MCG

A small business guide to eliminate the absurdity and be more rational:

1. The added complexity should not be admired, it should be avoided. When we start to turn around all possible solutions to a problem, we enter the path to chaos. It ends with contradictory ideas and people move in different directions. Simplicity requires that options must be reduced and a unique path decided.
2. The real antidote to fear of simplicity is “common sense”. To decide on essential issues, language, logic and simple common sense must be used, and a concrete action plan should be established. Common sense is the wisdom we all share. It’s something that records an obvious truth for a community.
3. Express ideas with simple words.
4. Too much information can be confused, it’s what’s called infoxication. There’s a big difference between data and information. Differentiate urgent from important.
5. Don’t trust someone you don’t understand. No creating or believing unrealistic expectations, no universal recipes, there are particular solutions.
6. Know the competition. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you don’t have to fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you don’t know the enemy, but you know yourself, you have the same chance of winning as losing. If you don’t know the enemy or know yourself, all your battles will be counted by defeats.
7. It is useless to tell a river to stop, it is best to learn to swim in the sense of the current. Try to know the value provided to the customer and that your client knows you.
8. A confusing strategy indicates that a company doesn’t know where it’s going. A simpler, and much more practical approach is to forget about “what you want to be.” Senior management should focus efforts on “what can be”.
9. Good leaders know where they want to go. The best leaders know that directing is no longer enough. The best leaders are storytellers, motivators, facilitators. They reinforce their sense of direction or vision with words and action.
10. The future belongs to the well-organized and well-focused company. The simpler the better. It’s time for ideas, to be transformed into strategies.

“Working more is not as effective as working better”

The economic, technical and social environment of the company has evolved a lot in recent years:

Competition has increased further and supply has needed to be internationalized.

The technologies that need to be applied are much more complex.

People at work aspire to greater responsibility and enriching the tasks entrusted to them.

The Lean philosophy proposes an organization that helps achieve results in everyday life that are better and permanent, supported by continuous improvement. This is a proven organization used by all leading companies in Lean.

What is a UAP

An organization of up to 20 people, in the same space and working time, usually organized in modules, with clearly identified internal customers and suppliers and a hierarchical manager.

It is as if we divide the factory into mini-factories, with responsibility and autonomy in its production area.

How a UAP works

A defined progress plan is defined for each, with objectives, indicators, an action plan and monitoring and a defined animation zone, including visual management of general indicators.

The competencies of UAP members are constantly improved: polyvalence and integration of new activities, which seek to give ample autonomy to address problems and improve outcomes.

What you want to achieve

Create continuous improvement dynamics within a small team, under a unique hierarchical responsibility.

Trust a responsibility to the group, developing and organizing the personal commitment of each individual. A true autonomy of operation, always respecting the rules of the company.

A short hierarchical line and a line of principles of competency development responsibility.

“Responsibility from the mini-factory”

How many times on the ground are machine breakdowns, corrective maintenance, unexpected events, spare parts that do not arrive…, delay our production, impact our costs and make maintenance and production more enemy than a team.

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is the methodology within the Lean philosophy, which allows to improve people’s ability to identify and eliminate all losses of the facilities. The secret is the rigorous application of maintenance standards.

The classic conception, divides the manufacturing into 2 roles. One is maintenance based on periodic reviews and troubleshooting. The other is manufacturing as such with operators dedicated exclusively to manufacturing.

The Lean conception, turns the classic concept.

Manufacturing is not divided into roles, in Total Productive Maintenance, all workers participate in the prevention, detection and correction of anomalies in the design or operation of machines (tasks such as; machine cleaning, inspection, greasing or detection and repair of defects)

The 2 great advantages of this concept are that:

• The operators are the ones who know the most about their machines,
• therefore, they are the most capable for their maintenance.

Operators feel like the owners of the machine they control.

So we talk about other maintenance, autonomous maintenance. In this type of maintenance the manufacturing operators perform some maintenance functions:

• Initial cleaning and 5S inspection.
• Detection of anomalys using tags.
• Cleaning, lubricating and inspection standards.
• Autonomous management. Level maintenance.

We all transmit examples and if you manage a team, you pass your own work style to your team, including how to use time.

Therefore, in order to achieve effectiveness, it is essential not only to be convinced of the value of a systematic approach to time-use techniques, but also to use them and trasmit to the others. To do this:

• Make the time usage discussion a regular part of the performance review, and set improvement goals.
• If you can get each of the people on your team to take on and share that idea, you’ll have achieved an impressively impactful multiplier effect.
• Your collaborators don’t handle time well if you don’t. The team always has to follow the example of the boss, in both good and bad manner.
• Don’t make it difficult for them to do it or find excuses for them.
• Dedicate the precise time to the development of your collaborators; learning and training do not appear freely and spontaneously; achieving one and the other is the role of the boss. It is your duty to do so; but it’s above all your interest. The ability you achieve as a boss is the ability you can achieve from your team.
• Analyze your workflow and look for ways to simplify it. We do not talk anymore about organization, because it’s supposed to be a lesson already learned but we can assure you that if anything can simplify and make shorter your process, it’s means to organize it properly.
• Look for causes of your team’s wasted time and discuss with it periodically how to attack them. Keep in mind that, as a group, the causes of time wasting multiply, but solutions are also enhanced.

“Practice and train, you’ll save time”

Lean is a management philosophy based on Toyota’s practices, which seeks to meet the needs and expectations of the customer, using the lowest consumption of resources through the elimination of waste such as operations that do not add value to the product or processes but generate additional costs and time.

The incorporation of lean philosophy into your organization will allow your customer to live an experience with greater value, improve the quality of the product, minimizing resources, time and even the effort of the collaborators.

The companies that implement Lean in their culture, take people into account as the most important capital, therefore focus their efforts on making the most of the potential of each worker and give greater responsibility to those who are in constant contact with the operation of the company.

Do you have any doubts about whether it will work for your organization?

Implementing Lean Culture in your organization will allow you to have a more effective approach to doing the job, no matter what the industry or size of the organization, with lean thought and practice your organization can be innovative and competitive, which in turn will allow you to sustain yourself over time.

Finally, keep in mind that Lean culture is not something that begins and ends, on the contrary it must be a cultural transformation, so that it is lasting and sustainable, taking into account that it includes a set of techniques focused on added value and people.

Our approach is accompanied by a management of change in the organization, a lasting cultural change over time.

From mcg we know from our experience that a Lean deployment will succeed whenever:

• Let’s have leadership committed to transformation.
• The lean approach is system, not just a “technical toolbox”
• Consistency of results in the short and medium term. We make sure that indicators are implemented
• Ensure the sustainable management of the organization.
• Let’s develop the internal potential of people at all levels, from managers to the front line.