Comments on: The Lean Community and the Second “P” https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/the-lean-community-and-the-second-p/ Lean Production | Lean Manufacturing | LEI | Lean Services Mon, 06 May 2024 11:55:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 By: Bob Emiliani https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/the-lean-community-and-the-second-p/#comment-222133 Mon, 06 May 2024 11:55:32 +0000 https://www.lean.org/?p=36740#comment-222133 At Pratt & Whitney where I worked in the 1990s, Shingijutsu kaizen consultants required us to complete all the items listed in the kaizen newspaper during the kaizen week. A representative from all the support functions — facilities, IT, purchasing, engineering, quality, finance, etc. — was required to stop by each kaizen area a few times a day to see if they had any action items, and if so those were to be completed immediately. Only under rare circumstances could an item be left incomplete on the kaizen newspaper at the end of the kaizen week, typically because it required making or procuring something that was essential to improving product flow. The responsibility for completing the open item was mine, as the business unit manager.

There is no point to engaging in kaizen if the items on the kaizen newspaper are not completed in real time. In cases where the “kaizen newspaper was gathering dust and that none of the problems had been addressed,” that is the sole responsibility of the company, not the kaizen consultant.

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