The document discusses building a continuous improvement culture through various tools and processes. It emphasizes using visual tools like boards and charts to display goals and metrics, conduct daily accountability meetings, and enable management to walk the factory floor. All employees should be engaged in process improvement through tools like error proofing, problem-solving meetings, and projects. Recognition of employees is also important. Key elements are consistency in application of tools, setting clear expectations, including all groups, and commitment from management to make continuous improvement a priority.

1. APICS Top Management Night
“Building a Continuous Improvement Culture”
Mike Pletzer

2. Importance Of Continuous Improvement Culture
• Enhance a companies ability to compete in a global market place, where
Customers expect:
 Cost competiveness
 Perfect quality
 100% on-time delivery to request
• Improve shareholder value by:
 Improving profitability quarter over quarter
 Increasing return on employed assets:
• Materials
• Machines
• Buildings
• Boost employee satisfaction by:
 Addressing issues that frustrate employees
 Providing opportunities for honest and sincere appreciation for a job
well done

3. Continuous Improvement Culture
• Key elements of a continuous improvement culture are:
 Visual indicators, displays, and controls are used to:
• Display comparisons of expected performance against actual performance
• Drive daily accountability meetings focused on taking action to resolve
problems and drive improvement
• Enable GEMBA or management by walking the floor
 Process improvement driven by all employees through the following tools:
• Error proofing challenges
• CQI (continuous quality improvement) meetings
• Green/Black belt projects
 Employee recognition
• Sincere and honest appreciation for a job well done

4. Visual Indicators, Displays,
and Controls

5. Standard Work Using Visual Tools
Tier
Meetings
Gemba
Walks
Resource
Allocation
Shift
Turnovers
Day By
Hour
Charts
Importance of creating standard work in a visual factory environment:
• Engrain the use of visual factory tools into everyone’s daily routine
• Set expectations for the required output per day
• Ensure people are taking accountability for challenges and opportunities occurring in
the factory
• Structured communication between shifts on how to allocate resources

6. Day By Hour Chart
•Goals calculators are needed for each
area output is going to measured
 Realistic goals for the operators based
on the WIP they will work on during
the shift
• Goal boards need to be able to quickly
identify the following:
 If the teams are “winning” or “losing”
 If a goal is missed why
 Goal for the day vs. the backlog

7. Keys Of Successful Day By Hour charts
• Goals set are realistic
 Goals must be attainable but challenging at the same time. If they are
consistently beat or missed they lose meaning to the Production Associates
 The owner of the goals must be available to validate or adjust goals based on
Production Associate input
• Goal calculators must be easy to use
 Goals need to be set at the beginning of each shift, which means the process
must be fast, reliable and easy
• Follow up on items that causing the teams to miss goals
 Failure to take action on why the teams are missing goals results in lost
opportunities for efficiency improvement and can demoralize the teams

8. Tier Accountability
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 1 Meetings (Start of all shift)
• Attendees
• Production Leads hold meetings with Production Associates
• Goals
• Review safety issues
• Review quality and production issues (internal findings)
• Review 5s actions
• Set direction for the day
Tier 2 Meetings (1.25 hours into all shifts)
• Attendees
• Production Supervisors hold meetings with Support Staff
• Goals
• Review escalated Tier 1 issues
• Review safety issues
• Review quality (external and internal findings)
• Review previous days production goals
Tier 3 Meetings (1.5 hours into the first shift only)
• Attendees
• Operations Manager hold meetings with Support Staff
• Goals
• Review escalated Tier 2 items
• Review safety issues
• Review quality and delivery status
• Review lean sigma activity (Kiazens, Green Belts, 5s)
• Level 1 Metric review (1 per week)

9. Example Tier Communication Board
Four times a week the team reviews
the key areas of the factory
• Safety
• Quality
• Delivery
• Lean Sigma
Meeting health rated every day
• Start on Time
• Charts Up-to-Date
• People are Prepared
• End on Time
Once per week key factory metrics are reviewed
• Metrics need to be relative to customer satisfaction,
company profitability, and employee recognition
• Metrics must be able to be affected by those
attending the meeting

10. Keys Of Successful Tier Meetings
• Commit time to complete the Tier meetings every day!
 Tier meetings need to take priority over all other activities
• Consistency of topics between the various Tier Meetings
 Common platform is required to for information needs to be able to flow
between Tier Boards
• Set expectations for the Tier leaders and participants
 Lack of preparation for the meetings lead to long and in-effective meetings

11. GEMBA Walks
Gemba
Walks
Supervisor
Turnover
Set
Resource
Plan
Identify/
Follow Up
On Issues
Evaluation
Of Each
Work Cell
Just Do
Lean
Sigma
Project
• GEMBA walks are the heart and
soul of a visual factory:
 Allows Managers/Supervisors to
get a daily pulse of how the
factory is operating
 Sets the factories priorities for all
shifts
 Provides an opportunity for the
Factory Manager to
teach/mentor Supervisors
 Demonstrates that
“Management” is engaged and
cares about the factory
operations

12. Keys Of Successful GEMBA Walks
• Commit time to complete the GEMBA walk every day!
 Need to treat the GEMBA walk as a priority, it can not be the first thing
canceled when people get busy
• Set expectations for each required attendee of the GEMBA walk
 Without defined expectations the GEMBA walk becomes a social event and
loses it value
• Include all functional groups in the GEMBA walk
 Important for all functional groups/team members to understand how they are
impacting each other
• Be conscious that your presence and actions are being noticed
 Need to be conscious of the topics being discussed and how they impact
employees
 The management team on the GEMBA walk should work to engage all
employees during the GEMBA walk

13. Utilization
Of Lean Tools

14. Lean Project Management
• Targeted at challenges that can
be solved by intensive focus in a
short period of time
• Operators attack issues that
affect them on daily basis
Kaizen
Error Proofing
CQI
Green/Black Belt
• Factory management reviews KPIs
(key performance indicators) to
identify improvement projects
• Complex projects that require use of
advanced lean tools structured
through the DMAIC process
• Projects scoped to take 3 – 12 months

15. Error Proofing Example

16. Error Proofing Example

17. Error Proofing Example
• The EPC solution was just the start of the work – the solution changed the
whole process
 Needed to buy tooling to make enable the process
 Needed to create process to deploy the “tape shapes”
 175 assemblies needed “tape shape” programs created for them
 Needed to update 175 assembly build instructions
 Process needed to be created for new assemblies

18. Employee
Recognition

19. Employee Recognition
Employee
Recognition
Wall of fame – centrally
located area to recognize
significant achievements
Gallery Walk – Employees
get to share their projects
with their fellow
employees
Recognition Lunch – thank
all participants for their
efforts and pick an EPC
winner
Lean Report Outs – Participants
report out on their projects to
the site management staff

20. Employee Recognition
• Gallery Walk
 EPC, Green Belt, and Black Belt participants create a poster board of their project
 Team members present their projects to their piers on all three shifts
 Enables best practice sharing through-out the organization as one local solution
may apply to other parts of the organization

21. Summary
• Lessons Learned
 Creating a continuous improvement culture is hard work that takes the resolve
and commitment of entire management staff
 Reach out to multiple resources to get ideas and help in your journey
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Industry Resources
 Determine which tools and processes work best for your situation
 Encourage creativity in tool development, while still keeping in the mind the
need for a commonly understood platform
 Provide support and be flexible when something doesn’t work
• Remember this continuous improvement, the first effort is not always successful
 Remember to recognize and thank your employee for their effort
• Sincere and honest appreciation for a job well done is critical!

22. Thank You!
Please See Me After For Questions