This 4-day interactive Lean Leader workshop will cover the relationships between lean tools, organizational leadership, and organizational culture. By exploring these relationships and practicing the skills we share each day, your leaders and your organization will begin behaving and thinking “lean”. While the workshop emphasizes tools and techniques, significant time will be spent on how […]
Training Within Industry (TWI) – SOUTHERN Wisconsin – Job Methods
One course of Optima’s three-course TWI Certification Program, this one-day workshop focuses on the skills required to improve and document current production/work methods. These skills, traditionally thought of as lean skills, can help your business processes stabilize, improve and thrive. Based on the TWI – JM improvement approach, you will: • Learn and apply the […]
Leader Standard Work for LEAN LEADERSHIP
By Christian Wolcott
What is your standard as a Manager or a Leader? Some insight; in vibrant, progressive organizations that strive to integrate continuous improvement with running the business, you need to be both an effective manager and leader fundamentally becoming a Lean Leader. The challenge is creating a standard that comprises both sets of skills and approaches. […]
Lean Yardstick
By Steven Hirt
Thinking about how the Lean Business System and its principles can influence your business is paramount and a key component of establishing your True North. Lean, although filled with tools, is by its very nature a people system. At its very foundation is respect for people. This does not mean just “being nice”, it means […]
Industry 4.0
Leadership of any organization is charged with determining ‘its’ future – where it is headed, how to address it and when – whether to come in early, late, or miss it. Scott Anthony, a Harvard professor once said: “Signs suggesting the looming need for transformation aren’t always obvious, and they are never unmistakable until it’s […]
Training Within Industry (TWI) – Southern Wisconsin – Job Relations
Perhaps the most important element to effective use of TWI is the understanding and practical application by leaders to use Job Relations techniques. One course of Optima’s three-course TWI Certification Program, this one-day TWI-JR workshop explores the purpose of JR to support Job Instruction (JI) and Job Methods (JM) in the use of TWI as […]
Paint Your People Gold
By Christian Wolcott
People closest to the work have the best ideas of how and what to change. Let’s examine this simple yet powerful statement. First people, which ones are we talking about? The employees. Which employees? The hardworking folks that directly handle and build the products and provide the services your customers receive. They are the people […]
Creating a “One Company” Culture
By Steven Hirt
In meeting with a new president of a company over a cup of coffee this morning, it dawned on me how hard creating a “one company” culture really is. Reflecting over my years of helping organizations envision, develop and execute strategy, I considered how difficult it is to make these simple words reality. I don’t think […]
Kaizen Décor
By Christian Wolcott
I was traveling last week and overnighted at a swanky hotel at my client’s suggestion. It was new, modern in that glassy, sanitized way with lots of hard surfaces, funky furniture with music cooler than traveling really is playing in the lobby. After checking in I walked the long moody, hallways with helter skelter carpet […]
Standard Work – MN Continuous Improvement Consortium event
Standard Work is repeatable, safe and reliable operations, with all tasks organized in the best known sequence using the most effective combination of people, material, machines and methods. In essence, it is the single best documented recipe for accomplishing work. It builds on tribal knowledge and best practices, tips, tricks and workarounds that hard-working people […]