Lean Project Management Principles

What if 80% of your work doesn’t even matter to your customer? In Lean, the ultimate goal is to create value for the customer. Yet, many processes are cluttered with activities that don’t contribute to that value. By breaking work down into Value-Add (VA) 🟢 , Non-Value Add (NVA) 🔴 , and Necessary Non-Value Add (NNVA) 🟡 activities, you can focus your efforts on what truly matters—and eliminate the rest. 1️⃣ Value-Add (VA) 🟢 These are the steps that directly enhance your product or service, the ones your customers are willing to pay for. Examples: - Machining a precision component - Assembling a product to customer specifications - Final quality checks that ensure reliability Why It Matters: - Directly increases customer satisfaction and product value - Drives revenue by focusing on what customers actually care about 2️⃣ Non-Value Add (NVA) 🔴 These are activities that do nothing to enhance the product or service, often just adding cost and delay. Examples: - Excessive material movement - Redundant inspections - Overprocessing steps that don’t improve quality Why It Matters: - Eliminating these wastes frees up time and resources - Streamlining processes leads to faster delivery and lower costs 3️⃣ Necessary Non-Value Add (NNVA) 🟡 - Some tasks don’t add direct value but are essential for safety, compliance, or technical reasons. Examples: - Mandatory regulatory inspections - Safety checks - Some administrative processes Why It Matters: - While these activities can’t be eliminated, they can often be optimized or minimized - Improving their efficiency reduces overall waste without compromising quality or compliance

Value Chain Analysis is a process that helps businesses understand how value is created and captured from each product’s initial conception through to its end use and beyond. The goal of Value Chain Analysis is to identify ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the supply chain by optimizing the flow of goods, services, and information. It comprises five primary activities and four support activities as illustrated in the diagram. There are three steps in Value Chain Analysis: 1. Identify the activities that create value for customers. This includes all the activities from initial research and design to production, marketing, and delivery. You should also consider the customer’s perception of value and any unique selling points. 2. Determine how much value each activity creates. This can be done by estimating the cost of performing each activity and then subtracting the cost savings generated by performing it more efficiently or effectively. 3. Identify ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of each activity. This may include streamlining processes, reducing waste, or finding new ways to add value for customers. By performing these three steps across each of the primary and support activities, CFOs can determine which activities create the most value versus those that should be discontinued.

Throughout my 30+ years journey leading textile and manufacturing operations, I've witnessed firsthand how the Kaizen philosophy has revolutionised organisational culture. It's not about grand, sweeping changes – it's about the compound effect of small, continuous improvements. The true essence of Kaizen lies in its simplicity and accessibility: • It transforms workplace culture from "That's not my job" to "How can I help?" • Empowers every employee to become a problem solver • Creates a sustainable framework for innovation • Builds resilience through continuous adaptation The most powerful transformations often begin with the smallest steps.  When every team member contributes daily improvements, the collective impact becomes extraordinary. Based on decades of leadership experience, here are three proven pillars of successful Kaizen implementation: 1. Leadership Through Gemba Walks Leaders must be visible on the shop floor. When we observe and engage directly with processes and people, real transformation begins. 2. Front-line Empowerment Your operators know the processes best. Give them the tools and authority to solve problems and watch innovation flourish. 3. Celebrate Progress Recognition drives repetition. Make it a habit to acknowledge improvements, no matter how small. Remember: Excellence is not a destination; it's a continuous journey of improvement. #leadership #team #peoplemangement #culture #kaizen #organizationculture #LeadwithRajeev

Do we use standardized work to make problems visible -- or to make people quiet? That's the question I keep coming back to after revisiting what Fujio Cho told U.S. manufacturers in 1993. Cho described standardized work not as a compliance mechanism, but as the current best-known way of doing the work -- a starting point, not a final answer. When someone can't follow the standard, the right response isn't blame. It's curiosity: What's wrong with the standard? What's wrong with the system? That framing changes everything. It shifts responsibility from the person to the process. It makes standards a tool for learning instead of enforcement. More than 30 years later, most organizations still get this backwards. I explored what Cho's perspective means for leaders and why it connects directly to psychological safety. https://lnkd.in/ehYX2wfa How does standardized work get used in your organization -- as a baseline for improvement or a tool for compliance?

Why Great Kaizen Ideas Fail to Scale in Steel Plants (and How Leaders Fix It) Across steel plants worldwide, thousands of low-cost, high-impact Kaizen ideas are generated every year. Yet many of them: ▪ Stay limited to one line or one plant ▪ Lose momentum after initial success ▪ Are never properly measured or sustained Global experience shows a clear truth: Scaling Kaizen is not a technical problem. It is a leadership, discipline, and sustainment challenge. Common challenges seen globally: 🔸 Local Kaizens don’t automatically scale 🔸 No standard way to define problems & benefits 🔸 Weak measurement — qualitative, not quantitative 🔸 Ownership shifts away from operators 🔸 Kaizen treated as a “project,” not daily work What leading steel plants do differently: ✔ Standardize the thinking, not just the solution ✔ Pilot → stabilize → scale ✔ Measure what truly matters (safety, downtime, productivity, defects) ✔ Make leadership gemba walks non-negotiable ✔ Recognize improvements immediately on the shop floor Because what we measure is what we count — and what we count is what we sustain. The real insight: Kaizen does not fail due to lack of ideas. It fails when ideas are not measured, reviewed, recognized, and sustained. Small improvements. Measured daily. Sustained relentlessly. #Kaizen #FrugalInnovation #SteelIndustry #ContinuousImprovement #OperationalExcellence #Gemba #LeanManufacturing #LeadershipInAction #ShopFloorExcellence #B5Plus #B5PlusGroup

Why Japan Excels at Continuous Improvement In the west innovation is treated as something reserved for top management. Leaders dream up the big ideas, everyone else is told to “stick to the process” and keep things running. Japan takes a very different approach: ➡️ Kaizen is embedded in daily work ➡️ Continuous improvement has no end date. ➡️Every level of the organization is involved in Kaizen That includes: +workers +supervisors +middle managers +executives. This shift in philosophy changes everything. No more waiting for top-down orders. improvements flow from the ground up. The people closest to the work are trusted: to see problems to test solutions to share what they learn. The results are striking: ➡️ Quality improves—defects are reduced before they spread. ➡️ Productivity rises—bottlenecks are spotted and addressed quickly. ➡️ Innovation deepens—small, changes add up to breakthroughs over time. ➡️ Engagement grows—people feel ownership because their ideas matter. Western companies often rely on one-off innovations that spike results for a moment but fade when the excitement wears off. Japanese companies, by contrast, build resilience and consistency through Kaizen, improving in small steps, every single day. The lesson is simple but powerful: Excellence doesn’t come from a single big idea. It comes from creating a culture where everyone improves, every day. Would your organization look different if Kaizen was embraced at every level, not just at the top?

#Lean is a learning system: a system of interconnected tools that all use the same learning cycle: plan, do, check, act. The purpose is to help people at every level of the organization learn from real work and improve it step by step. 1️⃣ At the workplace level, learning starts by making work visible and structured. Visual management tools such as kanban, andon, and 5S help teams see the flow of work, notice problems quickly, and keep standards clear. By making normal and abnormal conditions obvious, the workplace itself becomes a learning environment where people can understand what is happening and why. 2️⃣ Teams, led by team leaders, learn to improve their daily work habits through standardized work, daily problem solving, and suggestion activities. Standardized work provides a clear starting point for learning, not a rigid rulebook. Daily problem solving helps teams reflect on what did not go as planned and try small improvements. Suggestions allow everyone to participate in learning from experience and improving how the work is done. 3️⃣ Managers learn by focusing on improving processes rather than blaming results. They do this by supporting team leaders in leading kaizen, or continuous improvement activities. Through kaizen, managers practice understanding problems at their source, testing changes, and checking whether those changes really improve performance. This builds managerial skill in learning from facts instead of opinions. 4️⃣ Executives learn to make better decisions by using structured thinking tools such as A3s, ringis, and MIFAs. These tools slow down thinking just enough to clarify the problem, understand causes, consider options, and learn from outcomes. Instead of relying on intuition alone, executives practice disciplined learning from evidence and shared understanding. 4️⃣ Department heads learn to establish better policies and coordinate across functions through obeya rooms. Obeyas make plans, problems, and trade-offs visible across departments. They help leaders learn how their decisions affect others and how to align actions across organizational boundaries. 5️⃣ At the highest level, leaders challenge business models, priorities, and long-term goals through hoshin kanri. Hoshin kanri applies the same learning cycle to strategy. Leaders set direction, test it through deployment, learn from results, and adjust based on what actually happens in the business and in the market. Each of these tools applies the plan–do–check–act cycle at a specific organizational level. Together, they form continuous and connected learning loops throughout the company. These overlapping cycles of learning are what make an organization more customer focused and more productive over time. Lean delivers superior results because it turns everyday work into a system for learning and improvement. #LeanIsAwesome

Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE) is a metric used to measure the efficiency of a process by evaluating the value-added time in the process compared to the total process time. It assesses the effectiveness of a process in terms of minimizing waste and maximizing value. To calculate Process Cycle Efficiency, you need two key pieces of information: Total Process Time (TPT) and Value-Added Time (VAT). Total Process Time (TPT) refers to the total time it takes for a process to be completed, which includes both value-added and non-value-added activities. Value-Added Time (VAT) represents the time spent on activities that directly contribute to adding value to the product or service from the customer's perspective. These are the activities that customers are willing to pay for. The formula for calculating Process Cycle Efficiency is: Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE) = (Value-Added Time / Total Process Time) * 100 Let's consider a manufacturing process that involves eight steps: Step 1: Material Preparation - 10 minutes Step 2: Cutting - 20 minutes Step 3: Shaping - 15 minutes Step 4: Assembling - 30 minutes Step 5: Painting - 25 minutes Step 6: Quality Inspection - 5 minutes Step 7: Packaging - 15 minutes Step 8: Shipping - 10 minutes To calculate Total Process Time (TPT), simply sum up the individual times: TPT = 10 + 20 + 15 + 30 + 25 + 5 + 15 + 10 = 120 minutes Now, let's identify the value-added steps in the process. In this example, value-added steps are considered to be Cutting, Shaping, Assembling, and Packaging: VAT = 20 + 15 + 30 + 15 = 80 minutes Using the given formula, we can calculate Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE): PCE = (80 / 120) * 100 = 66.67% Therefore, the Process Cycle Efficiency for this manufacturing process is 66.67%. Let's consider an example from the service industry, specifically a customer support process. In this scenario, the customer support process consists of six steps: Step 1: Receiving and registering customer inquiries - 5 minutes Step 2: Initial assessment of the inquiry - 10 minutes Step 3: Conducting troubleshooting or investigation - 30 minutes Step 4: Providing a solution or recommendation - 15 minutes Step 5: Documenting and updating the customer's case - 5 minutes Step 6: Closing the case and following up with the customer - 10 minutes To calculate Total Process Time (TPT), we sum up the individual times: TPT = 5 + 10 + 30 + 15 + 5 + 10 = 75 minutes Now, let's determine the value-added steps in the process. In this example, the value-added steps are considered to be Steps 3 (troubleshooting or investigation) and Step 4 (providing a solution or recommendation): VAT = 30 + 15 = 45 minutes Using the given formula, we can calculate Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE): PCE = (45 / 75) * 100 = 60% Therefore, the Process Cycle Efficiency for this customer support process is 60%. #qualityassurance #leansixsigmablackbelt #leanmanufacturing #processexcellence #operationalexcellence #businessexcellence

Value Stream Mapping activity done with stick-notes A Value Stream Map (VSM) is a great tool in your Lean journey but sometimes can be difficult to know where to start and to get buy-in from all stakeholders. Primarily a VSM outlines the critical steps (both material & information) in a process (value stream) from start (Supplier) to finish (Customer) together with the processing time, processing rate, volume, inventory & staff involved. It highlights the bottleneck/restrictions or waste so that improvement effort can be applied in the most needed areas. The ultimate outcome is better value to the Customer (reducing waste and increasing the Value proportion). I’ve used a simple activity when introducing VSM, that can be a great entry point, the colour of the sticky-notes is one of the keys: 1.      Assemble your team, agree on the scope & the intended outcome. 2.      Step out the process using stick-notes (noting the process owner), determine if the steps are Non-Value Add (pink sticky-notes), Business-Value-Add (light blue) or Value-Add (light green-shown also with a tick). 3.      Determine the step process time (the time to complete that step-shown in dark green) 4.      Included the wait or delay time between steps (red sticky-notes) 5.      Finally highlight the wasteful areas that could be targeted for improvement (red cross) 6.      Adding up all the dark green and red sticky-notes provides the total lead time. The real Value to the Customer is calculated by the Value-Add time (light green) divided by the total lead time. The higher the proportion, the better customer focus. 7.      Then you can transfer the sticky-note map onto a VSM diagram If you’ve read my posts, you’ll know that I like to start simple. In the comments is a link to a bit more information on Process Mapping & VSMs. See a link in the comments to further information of VSMs & Process mapping.

Your training budget is bleeding money. Here's why: You're measuring the wrong thing. Most manufacturers track: → Hours in training sessions → Certificates earned   → Courses completed → Knowledge tests passed But here's the brutal truth: Training is a COST until it's applied. I've seen teams ace Six Sigma exams, then go back to the same wasteful processes. I've watched operators get certified in TPM, then ignore equipment maintenance schedules. I've met managers who can recite lean principles but can't eliminate a single bottleneck. The problem isn't the training. The problem is the gap between learning and doing. The Real ROI Formula: Training Cost ÷ Measurable Floor Improvement = Actual ROI If the denominator is zero, your ROI is zero. No matter how much you spent. No matter how good the training was. Here's the system that actually works: STEP 1: Identify Your Losses First ↳ What's costing you money right now? ↳ Downtime? Defects? Delays? Waste? ↳ Quantify the pain before you buy the solution STEP 2: Map Skills to Losses ↳ Which skills would directly impact these losses? ↳ Root cause analysis for quality issues? ↳ Preventive maintenance for downtime? ↳ Value stream mapping for delays? STEP 3: Assess Current Capabilities ↳ Who has these skills already? ↳ Where are the gaps in your workforce? ↳ Don't train everyone in everything STEP 4: Train with a Target ↳ Before any training: "We will apply this to solve X problem" ↳ Set a specific improvement goal ↳ Timeline for implementation STEP 5: Apply Immediately ↳ The window between learning and doing should be days, not months ↳ Start with a pilot project ↳ Measure the impact STEP 6: Scale What Works ↳ If it worked on one line, expand it ↳ If it didn't work, understand why ↳ Refine and try again The shocking reality: Most training fails not because of poor content. It fails because of poor application. Your operators know what to do. They just don't do what they know. The question isn't: "What should we learn next?" The question is: "What have we learned that we're not using yet?" That podcast on lean you listened to last week? Apply one concept today. That Six Sigma training from last month? Start a small improvement project tomorrow. Because untapped knowledge isn't potential. It's waste. What's one thing your team learned recently that they haven't applied yet?