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Answering your questions about Lean in the Service Industry — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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Answering your questions about Lean in the Service Industry

Amanda Zimmerman | Process Improvement Tips · 2,636 words · 13 min read · EN

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of Answering your questions about Lean in the Service Industry by Amanda Zimmerman | Process Improvement Tips on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

hello problem solvers today I wanted to give an answer to a question that somebody posted on my video uh process Improvement 101 they asked about applying lean in the service industry and I thought this is a good question to actually answer for everybody so I'm just trying to squeeze this in here and

make sure that I give you an answer uh while I have a quick few minutes uh so that this person gets an answer and hopefully somewhat of a timely a timely period even though it's been a few days so what they said was that they watched my videos they really liked uh how we

broke down the tools but they said you know it can be really confusing when they look at all these tools especially with green belt so what they said is I love that you have so much experience with the application of these tools which tools would you suggest that best Works in a service-based organization

like health and what steps do I take to plan the continuous Improvement project now they also sent me a few other questions behind this that I'm going to answer as well this is a meaty question so first let's start with that service versus manufacturing so what are the differences between applying lean in a

service organization versus a manufactur context so there's two major things that I want to call out here one in the in the service industry one of the big differences is that we can't see the product so in manufacturing we can see that product and we can see it move through these different machines move

through our process where it's really clear what is the product and what steps is it moving through but in the service industry this is not as clear it's really really hard for us to see this service move through all those different steps of our process because they're moving through people usually they're moving through maybe software so that

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makes it quite invisible which means that we as the lean six segma practitioners have to make that visible for our teams whereas in the product setting this is much easier to see now the second part of this or the Nuance here is that that means that we are in the service industry much more focused

on people and behaviors so a lot of the things that we're going to be able to uh influence change on are going to be around Behavior changes that people need to make now if you if you've tried to change anybody's behavior in the past it's hard people don't want to change so it makes it really challenging for us to

go into the service industry where we can't see the product and now we have to really focus on changes that are people-based not equipment based or or ingredient based variable based right when we're talking about manufacturing maybe you decide that you're going to change a piece of uh your tooling or you're going to change one of the the

things that go into whatever you're making so if you're making C cook cies maybe you're going to use a different type of flower right we can't really do that in the same way in the service industry so it can be really challenging so let's just kind of start at that place where we see that difference

between the service industry and the product or manufacturing industry so coming in we know it's going to be a little bit more challenging so the first question here what tools would I suggest that you use in a service-based organization so there are three tools that I would recommend that you really master and you try try to really get

good at because they're going to help you in the service industry just um break in right so I'm talking about here foundational tools so tools to start with so some of the tools that I think that you should Master first when you're going to do this in the service industry is one the eight wastes so start doing

gimble walks start using those downtime wastes and start looking for those now you may need to challenge yourself or the teams that you're talking to uh in how do you inter interpret this for your business so over production can be a hard one right we talk about having a finished good ready before it's time to

but uh in the service organization this might be something like maybe you have training ready too early maybe you have forms ready too early maybe you've created too many um uh systems too early and the people aren't actually ready to use those yet and then something changes and now they're never going to use that

tool that you you've designed right so look at those different downtime wasts and uh see how you can interpret that for your teams see what examples that you can start to come up with your teams do gamble walks challenge other people in your business the second one would be 5S now you're going to say Amanda this

is very very manufacturing based 5S is all about making sure that our environment is as free from clutter as possible to make it as easy as possible to for us to find what we need but that that doesn't just mean physical environments physical settings what we want is whether it's physical or virtual

we want it to be free from clutter we want to make it really easy for us to see a defect if a defect occurs so I'm talking about your desktops your folders your organization of all the different tools that you have out there your internet how many internet projects are we talking about right now right so get

that teams up get your interet going so so that it's organized and it's efficient for your team this is this is really important because when we change our environment we open people up to new ways of working which means you have a window where people are going to be more receptive to change so this is a really

good way for you to introduce lean into the system and get people some of those quick wins which we're going to talk about in just a minute that third tool I think that you should really start to master is the five wise so really starting to get into that root cause and asking why so that you're getting deeper

with your teams because you want to start to set that Foundation of scientific thinking now so you can scale it up and scale it up as you go on so the second question here what steps do I take to plan the continuous Improvement project oh this is a meaty one too and I

I'd say that there's two pieces here so do you want a culture shift or do you want to do a project this is the decision that you want to make if you want do a culture shift then this is a whole organizational piece that you're going to need to work with leadership and you're really going to have to come

up with a strategy in terms of what you want to see change you'll have to really work with people to get on board with continuous Improvement build that competency throughout your team so this is where you have maybe a CI manager or a leader that can help to facilitate that change across your organization so

that's the culture shift obviously that's the harder the harder thing but maybe the right thing but the question here that that they called out was to plan the continuous Improvement project so if we take this from a project focus and this person specifically called out the process maturity model so if you haven't seen

that check out the process Improvement intro 101 that goes into more detail on that or take one of my courses where you can learn more about that process maturity model so the process maturity model they said that they're only at like level two and they want to get to that next level so that means that they

really need to probably implement that culture shift but even if they're at that point where they're not going to have a manager come in they can start getting their teams ready start using these tools within their organization they can use them one off like we talked about with 5S or downtime or they can do

specific projects so if you want to do some specific projects let's talk about the steps that can help your organization do that especially if you're someone that's doing it on your own in a service organization so the first thing that I would recommend is that you start with 5S because like I said you change your environment people

are then receptive to changing other things in their process so if you start with 5s and then you start to do Kaizen so these are really focused Improvement events where you get a team together to uh make improvements and changes and some of those improvements and changes could be 5S related or they could be

something in entirely different or focused on a specific process now these kaizens are a chance for you to win the hearts and minds of your team this is a chance for you to sell continuous Improvement for you to get some of those quick wins so that they're excited about the program and then after those kayens what

you're going to do is you're going to start thinking about that wider lean engagement then you're going to start thinking about do I want to make this a culture shift how do I do that once you've started to imp Implement that you've seen some of that embed within your culture that's when you're going to

go to Six Sigma that's when you're going to start getting some green belts or black belts in your organization to run Six Sigma level projects but what most organizations do is they start with Six Sigma they don't do any of that found foundational work which means when you start your green belt you have to almost

do all of that within your first green belt project right so if you were going to start a project that's what I recommend start with 5S do a Kaizen do some wider lean engagement and then take on a Six Sigma project structured problem solving tools are always out there too to help you do that and are

really helpful so pdca A3 cata deic lean on those find one that you love and see how you can utilize it for your organization now the person that asked this question had a few other questions that they messaged me as well that obviously center around this and so one is what are the key steps for project

success and what are some of the pitfalls we want to avoid so some of the key steps for project success or I would say here maybe engagement success or lean success um the biggest thing the thing that drives the car the things that make makes this um uh succeed or fail is all around leadership if

leadership is engaged then you have a huge chance of having a positive outcome if leadership isn't engaged you have a huge chance of not having the outcome that you want so really really important to get that leadership team engaged as much as possible so talk to leadership find out what they want choose projects

that are strategically aligned to things that they care about right and then the second piece of this or you know you can have that as one or two but the second piece of this would be quick wins so this is quick wins on the floor but if you can get any of those quick wins for

the leadership team to awesome so you need to get the leadership team engaged but you need that bottomup engagement as well so if you can get some quick wins some things that maybe aren't so flashy and exciting for leadership if you can get those for the staff for the team that's on the floor doing the work each

and every day then they're more likely to start engaging with you and connecting with you so really important there get some quick wins understand what leadership wants so that you can strategically align yourself to that and get leaderships Buy in right so this is really important for you to have a successful project and then the other

side of that is what pitfalls do we want to avoid so I could say not having leadership involved right that's definitely something that would be a negative um but I'm going to actually take it a bit of a step further or a step in a different direction and that's this is a team sport this isn't you

improving something magically on your own you don't have a magic wand you can't magically make all of this happen and pretend that it's going to work for everyone this is not magic this is a team effort we remember at the beginning we talked about the difference between a product and a service manufacturing

versus service industry in service industry people are important change management is important it's ESS essential for you to be able to sustain your change so if you don't have a team engaged from the beginning you can't adjust the machine in the right way right because the people are the machine are the processes right so you need

their engagement you need their connection you need their buyin for you to actually make really substantial sustaining changes to the process so get that team involved get those people involved so that you can see the benefits so that you can see these changes actually hit that bottom line that you want because if you just lead

it on your own it's only going to sustain as long as you are in the room as soon as you walk away it's going to go back to the way that they always did and especially when we're talking about virtual or hybrid environments where people now working away from their desk if you don't involve them now they're

going to go back as long as it's available to them they will go back to the way it was maybe you can modify software and that kind of thing but if you're doing those changes without them involved I'm going to I'm going to bet you they're going to be upset with the changes even if they like like them in

the long term they'll be upset with them at first so involve the people in the process in your project or your lean Six Sigma effort so that's a quick Qui quick little explanation there or answer to this question that we got around service-based organizations I'm still traveling uh I'll be back home in a

couple weeks and I'm super excited to be able to be stable so I can answer more of your questions so I can finish up uh getting that white belt on the calendar that I want to get up there there for everyone and uh I'm hoping to see more people in training next year so I'm

really excited to get that kicked off and to see you soon have a great day