So what is improvement in your organization? In five words make things safer, simpler, better,
faster, and cheaper. These things are the processes,
the product or service. Why is it crucial to improve?
We observe that if the organization doesn't improve, it gets worse.
There is no status quo. The only two options are evolve or die.
Everyone agrees? Then the next question is
who and when do we improve things? Well, the most powerful and empowering approach
is when improvement is everyone's daily business, then some argue and we are too busy for that.
Okay, that's the theme of this loop: one approach to make improvement everyone's daily business.
But first, without any standard there won't be improvement, so what is the standard?
Tracy Richardson writes that "A standard is the best known documented method
at a given moment that we all agree to be accountable to
until we improve it together." Just let that sink in.
We use a standard as a reference for training and a benchmark for improvement and it's documented.
All that standard documentation answers the questions: "What we do, why we do what we do,
and how we do what we do."
Depending on what we are describing we will use templates that are fit for purposes,
like job descriptions, service level agreements, checklists, and many more.
Some would say this is too much admin. Actually, when employers apply their minds and
time to write a standard, they are shown respect for the next generation of employees that will
learn better and faster for their new skills. A digital document management system will
preserve organizational knowledge. It is easy to access, easy to create,
and is well controlled. To meet those requirements,
impi! provides a pre-configured document management system on the TeamPage platform.
Knowledge is organized in four main groups and sections for easy access.
We have our core processes where value is created for the customers.
Then we have the support processes: they are enablers of the core processes.
Under management systems are regrouped the various international
industry standards the company has established. The last group is a glossary where each definition
can be linked to other documents. In each section they are the
relevant set of documents with more than 20 templates that make easy document creation.
Every document has automated version control and unique identification.
Thanks to the technology, document administration is reduced.
There are three types of standard documents that are of particular interest in this loop.
The standard operating procedure, or SOP, the work instruction
and the service level agreement, or SLA. The SOP describes how to operate
a system or process. The work instruction
explains how to operate an activity, and the SLA defines the performance expectations
between internal customers and suppliers. All these standard documents provide the
information to define what performance needs to be managed and measured.
Leadership will determine which are the critical processes that
they want to measure in the Mini Business Units. We previously covered key performance indicators
in Loop 2: Manage Team Performance. With standards and triggers we can
see problems and manage them. A short interval KPI triggered a problem that
needs solving as we briefly explained in Loop Two. Let's add some colours to our explanation.
Problem solving methods would usually attempt to answer these three questions.
Question one: What happened when the KPI was triggered or the problem showed up?
Question two: What must we do now? And question three: How to stop it from
happening again in the future? The first two questions
look at correcting the problem. These are immediate contingency actions.
The production line may be down or a customer needs to be serviced.
The root cause is still there. The problem is likely to come back.
By answering question three we strive to find a root cause.
A countermeasure may reduce the impact of the problem or even eliminate it.
This is the corrective action, so the correction must be attended to rapidly.
It is a speed issue - do it now. Finding the root cause to the
problem can take time and so could the implementation of the countermeasure.
This is resource consuming and it needs to be done well.
This is a quality issue. Another trigger for
improvement is a non-conformity. It is a deviation to a standard and abnormality.
It could be internal, such as a production line irregularity,
or one or more failures to meet quality standards. It could be an external non-conformity, like our
external customers explaining that we are failing to deliver consistently quality product on time.
A non-conformity could affect a process or a product.
A non-conformity report is created when an investigation to abnormality is conducted,
then action is taken to control and correct the issue and deal with the consequences.
Here on TeamPage this non-conformity form is linked to the non-conforming process.
The result of the investigation, and actions taken, is documented.
When the correction is applied the next question is:
"Do we need a corrective action?" As we've seen, a corrective action
will be required to solve the problem by finding one or several root causes,
decide on countermeasures and implement them. This is time and resource consuming.
How can we limit this effort so that we can focus on the problem that have serious impacts
on people, customers, and the business in general? A single slip-up or one missing document shouldn't
be treated the same as a repetitive process failure of a major safety risk.
The decision to pursue a corrective action should be based on risk.
The responsible leaders look at the likelihood of the non-conformity to reoccur
and its consequence, then they may motivate not to start the corrective action process.
The corrective action form is a repository of the problem-solving process where the root
cause is identified using the method of choice. The motivation for the countermeasure or solution
is also there, and the verification of its effectiveness to address the root cause.
The innovation form was introduced in Loop One: Managed Process Risks.
It captures the mini project required to implement the solution or countermeasure
resulting from the outcome of a corrective action. All the standards and records of non-conformity,
corrective action or innovation are necessary to capture improvement and knowledge.
They need to be simple enough to use and unintrusive, yet they must support accountability.
There is a fine balance between unnecessary admin and the discipline required to
integrate improvement into daily business. Improvements achieved with the innovation resulted
in the standards being adjusted. I'm referring to the SOP,
work instruction and SLA. The loop is closed.
Thank you for watching.
In the next video I'll present you how to break down silos in the organization
with the management of internal customer and supplier relationship between teams.