This is an original article from the NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog.

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) defines people-centric leadership (PCL) as a leadership approach that seeks to create a culture in which everyone is encouraged to improve and apply their talents and given the opportunity to pursue excellence at work every day.

In part one of this series, we discussed the importance of the Gemba walk and how well executed and thought out Gemba Walks can drive sustained Continuous Improvement. Great Gemba Walks become a focused process whereby leadership engages with various parts of the organization to observe, learn, and provide support to meet organizational goals and objectives and more importantly, the needs of its customers. Leadership is observing, learning, and engaging where value is being created, and teaching the team members to be problem solvers to achieve continuous improvement.

An original article from the NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog.

The lean manufacturing movement came out of a desire to reduce waste and inefficiencies and improve productivity in the operation. Many manufacturers have also benefited from the resulting continuous improvement mindset as engaged employees became empowered to change things for the better.

This article will focus on technology as well as Training Within Industry - Job Instruction (TWI-JI) module to capture standardized work.

The challenge: The onboarding process is challenging. The primary reason is two-fold.

First, if tasks are documented, they are usually written and describe the steps in the process. However, the onboarding process is much more than tasks. It involves a logical format that often uses more sensory input to be successful (e.g. vision or audio). Only, providing a written document for training has limited effectiveness as it does not consider all sensory input. Different individuals capture knowledge differently. Providing multiple methods or considering different sensory inputs will provide a more effective educational session.

For years, those of us in operations have heard of or used the term “Gemba.” In fact, we often use the term quite loosely not realizing the Gemba is not just where the work is done, but where value-added work is done. A key understanding is how a well-executed Gemba Walk can help improve flow and value to the organization.

As a business leader, are you searching for an environment where high levels of collaboration and innovation meet speed and flexibility to drive your business forward? Although we all want to get there, it seems like that environment is either too difficult to achieve, or when you finally get there, even more difficult to sustain.

I had an AHA moment the other day. I shouldn’t have, really. What I’m about to reveal should have been painfully obvious. But, as the old saying goes, sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. I had been blinded by all the trees standing right in front of me and didn’t realize I was in the middle of a very large forest.

The IMEC Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Services (AMTS) service is the strategic incorporation of nine (9) core Industry 4.0 technologies along with all the enterprise’s other continuous improvement initiatives. Looking at AMTS, we see the confluence of several process mapping tools come to bear, ensuring that the enterprise has a unified, well-coordinated and well-integrated improvement system for achieving their strategic and operational goals / targets.

Written by Steve Sandercock and Greg Thompson.

Lean manufacturing uses many lean tools to improve production and efficiency by getting the most out of each resource. The goal of lean manufacturing is to find better ways to do things – requiring less effort, less time, and fewer resources.