The document discusses ways for managers to help upgrade employees' skills through continuous training and improvement. It emphasizes using a PDCA cycle of planning training, executing it, reviewing results, and improving the process. Managers should simplify training and conduct it on the shop floor while working. Exposing problems, rather than hiding them, helps focus on improvement. Suggestion programs can improve involvement but require proper preparation, feedback, and incentives. Leaders guide improvement by thinking small, supporting ideas, sharing success, and communicating at the shop floor level. Control points help management understand processes and establish clear checkpoints for overcoming weaknesses.

1. Shop Floor Management

2. Chapter 5 Discuss the management role in upgrading everybody’s skills within an organization.

3. Chapter 5 Role of manager is important to upgrade skills of their people. However, many people don’t know or practice how to practice this. Typical Management Problems in Upgrading People’s Skills So we don’t take responsible or allocate sufficient time for education, leaving people behind. If we spend time for chasing fire and not upgrading skills, our future will be limited.

4. Chapter 5 Not just as individuals, we need to think of ways to work on important jobs as group as well Ideas for Managers and Staffs in Upgrading People’s Skills Recognizing important of upgrading skills, we go through cycle. Plan to provide training (plan) Execute training (do) Review how the idea is generated (check)

5. Chapter 5 Share applications of skills and provide feedback to improve training process (act) Go back to item 1 and continue cycle Even this principle is simple, the execution can make difficluties. We need to find ways to train people with less involvement of outside specialists or centralized training organizations. The training program should simplified and done right on the shop floor. As we do our jobs and gain experience over time, we tend to develop habits

6. Chapter 5 But if we depend on our habits, we can’t meet the requirements of today’s business. We need to see, listen and learn without prejudice. If our judgment skewed, it difficult to access things properly. Therefore it better to start out with no knowledge, to look at the situation afresh and learn to use own wisdom to the maximum.

7. Chapter 6 In order to promote improvement activities, we need to be able to expose problems, identify problems areas and do problem-solving effectively.

8. Chapter 6 It is important to expose problems effectively so that suitable tools for solving can be used. Exposing problems effectively will not only help to maintain standard but also help to guide better and involve everybody in improvement. For organization as a team, problems should be not only dealt with in specific areas but also throughout the company. Since any organization have its own mission, objectives and plan of action to achieve, problems need to be expose in each specific area so that problem solving process take place. Inventory can cover problems and prevent us from continuous improvement.

9. Chapter 6 We should reduce the inventory level to uncover problems and address problems. As we take away these wasted or underutilized resources, we can utilize the resources better and focus to attain our goals. So as we try to reduce extra resources, we should be able to make improvement. Key reasons for reducing inventory Exposing problems rather than covering up Focusing attention on problems Utilizing resources constructively

10. Chapter 6 If there are people who do not know about problems, it may be sign that they can’t utilize their resources well to make continuous improvement. Instead of solving problems themselves, management should think of problem-solving approaches so that more people can participate. If these tools are introduced unclearly, it can hurt the organization and people. Therefore coordination, support and feedback from management and education become very important.

11. Chapter 7 How to practice suggestion program effectively in your organization?

12. Chapter 7 Suggestion program is one of the problem-solving activities. However suggestion program can face failure because management think potential of people’s talent too lightly and lack of willpower in management. There are some facts for why suggestion program fails Jump into problems without much preparation Accomplishments are not shared within people Don’t get feedback In spite of difficulties, there are many successful suggestion programs.

13. Chapter 7 Monetary incentives should be limited if we focus on involving total work force. In order to get everybody’s participation, suggestions can be shared in meeting or newsletter. General recommendation is to focus on small improvement of people involvement, no of suggestions increased and improve quality of suggestion. Implementing an effective suggestion program has four phase. Preparation phase Startup phase

14. Chapter 7 Expansion phase Further phase Some want to share their ideas through suggestion program. The benefits of suggestion program Make easy to communicate each others Expose areas where support are needed By keeping individual records, each can see the progress

15. Chapter 8 Why are leaders important for continuous improvement in an organization? Discuss the roles of leader.

16. Chapter 8 Leading people is more important than managing people. So managers need to develop a broad understanding of business and high level of leadership skills. The more people improve skills and gain confidence, the more manager can delegate responsibility. We should see manager as a leader and employees as a customer. Leadership can’t be found at traditional organization because it is situational. Leader have strong desire to accomplish than the members.

17. Chapter 8 Guiding improvement process at shop floor Think of small improvement fist Persuade someone to think about improvement Guide people to think about what they can do to improve Find ways to support and implement ideas Follow up the implementation Sharing success If company have great success, the leader should share this achievement. That’s point out everybody is working together to accomplish the mission.

18. Chapter 8 Improving communication at the shop floor Absence of meetings indicate that there is no close linkage between management and people at the shop floor. Recognize and reward people Positive reinforcement can motivate the people at the shop floor. So leaders try to find the opportunities for reorganization and reward. Leaders feel that important part of their job is to provide opportunities to celebrate success and encourage people to move forward.

19. Chapter 9 If your company is facing failure due to the weakness in control system, how will you overcome it?

20. Chapter 9 If company face failure, management should try to use PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle. The time it takes to go through the cycle will differ depending on the nature of work and needs. In reality, there are different stages of progress to digest this cycle. As more checking and acting take place, planning should become easier. PDCA model provide management with clarity and drive organization forward.

21. Chapter 9 Another way for overcoming weakness is managing improvement activities with control points. To establish clear checkpoints and network of control, management should understand concept of control points. Depend of characteristics, control points are divided into control items at outcome of process and check items at the root cause of process. Same concept can be used for either manufacturing and management.