True North

True North is an important Lean concept that helps the organization align itself towards one common direction. The True North statements are determined by the top leadership of the company depending on the direction they want to take the company. All company strategies, tactics should be aligned to the True North. In this article, we will cover a brief overview of True North and discuss how one can go about creating True North for their company.

Spaghetti Diagram

Spaghetti diagram is one of the widely used tools in the manufacturing, service, and logistic sectors. It helps eliminate or reduce motion and transportation wastes that exist in any process. In this article, we will go over a high-level overview of Spaghetti diagrams.

Leader Standard Work

Leader Standard Work is an important element of Lean deployment within any company. Leader Standard Work ensures that the critical activities that are performed by leaders are documented and tracked to ensure that they don't slip through the cracks due to the job pressures and responsibilities assigned to leaders. In this module, we will look at what is Leader Standard Work, how to deploy Leader Standard Work and what are some pitfalls to watch out for as you deploy Leader Standard Work within your organizations.

Kanban Method of Project Management

Organizations typically get improvement work done through projects. Each project has a definite start and stop and employees within a company may be working on dozens on projects to accomplish company goals and objectives. The problem occurs when employees are overwhelmed with multiple projects each at different stage of execution. If this is not managed properly, then as new projects enter the system and they get lost in the process and take a long time to exit the system while customers are impatiently waiting for their results. There is no defined time that the project is expected to be completed as it may be stuck behind other projects that are currently active. How then do we manage projects to ensure a predictable level of performance for the company and its customers?

Implementing Hoshin Planning in your Company

In this article, we look at a powerful Lean tool called Hoshin planning that can help organizations deploy their strategic plans and objectives into an executable action plan that has the alignment and buy-in from all levels of the organization. We look at what is a Hoshin plan and discuss why is it important to perform Hoshin planning. At the end of the article, we will also list out some pitfalls that you must avoid when you try to deploy Hoshin plans within your own company.