Lean Problem-Solving for Team Members and Leaders

Your personal success depends on your ability to lead teams! High performing team leaders are promoted and are successful entrepreneurs. Leading teams is the critical competence for leaders at all levels today. And, problem-solving is the basic methodology that drives improvement by teams and lean organizations. This short course provides the basic skills and philosophy of effective problem solving. It is based on 45 years of experience developing teams and implementing lean management or Toyota Production System. I recommend that you go through the course with your team so that you can together practice each of the methods in your real work setting. This is not an “academic” course, but rather it is based on working in manufacturing, healthcare and other industries with hundreds of teams tackling real world problem and engaging in continuous improvement.

Toyota Production System, or lean management and culture, are based on the practice of continuous improvement through problem solving. This lectures reviews the basic principles of lean that apply to problem solving.

The principles of lean that are important to how we solve problems include the following:

• Respect for People

• Continuous Improvement

• Going to Where the Work Get's Done - the Gemba

• Know the Facts - Graphing the Data and Understanding Trends

• Applying the Scientific Method of Experimentation

The course covers the following:

The Lean philosophy of problem-solving and continuous improvement.

Healthy attitudes toward problem solving.

Simple situation analysis.

Root cause analysis - the "five why's?"

Brainstorming causes of problems.

The PDCA problem solving model.

The A3 problem solving model.

The skill of brainstorming.

Pareto or the 80/20 rule.

Action-Planning and follow-up