Identifying & Prioritising Loss

Ever-So-Lean Podcast

Hold on to your pencils and get ready to transform your organisation with the latest episode of the Ever-So-Lean Podcast! Join Matt as he sits down with the amazing Pankaj Sharma, Managing Director at Wahl Clipper Corporation, all the way from the stunningly beautiful country of Vietnam.

Pankaj's incredible experience in Continuous Improvement roles across the globe makes him the perfect guide to help us understand how to identify and prioritise losses in your organisation. Learn how to identify and eliminate the "8 Wastes", which are non-value-adding activities or processes within a system, process, or organization. These wastes include Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-utilized Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Extra Processing, also known as TIMWOODS or DOWNTIME. By eliminating these wastes, you can increase Safety boost Efficiency, Reduce Costs, and Improve Quality.

Pankaj is an expert in implementing the Pillars of World Class Manufacturing (WCM) and the Cost Deployment methodology, and his extensive experience of diverse cultures, different paces, and varying impacts make him the perfect guest to help us navigate this daunting challenge.

Key Takeaways:

1. Identify a KPI for the loss first. Look at the KPIs that are directly impacted by that loss and use them as the measure.
2. Make it visual to help people understand.
3. When visiting the shop floor, focus on the team/the people that are doing the job for them to understand the waste. They likely haven’t got the time to be working through data and looking at spreadsheets. Make it visual e.g. create Pareto or Pie Charts. Create graphs create something to visualise is the lost a really help people understand it. It goes a long way to winning people round and getting people on your side and getting them to take ownership of the problem as well.
4. Ask people questions to understand the loss open ended questions e.g. talk to me about, tell me why, what do you think of. Get people involved, it really does work.
5. Look at the source losses don’t look at the symptom losses because if you solve the source you will solve the symptom.
6. Don’t feel the need to collect all the data right at the very beginning. There could be loads of data and that takes time to collect and review. It’s great to have the data, it’s important but when you’re kicking off don’t wait. It’s better to get 60% now than 100% never so start off by just going out and understanding where your losses are. Observe and get some real basic data just to help you make an informed decision. You can go back and collect more data afterwards, but initially just have a look and see what you think. Ask your people.
7. Don’t remain in denial, adapt and overcome and what we mean by that is if you’re working on a project and you’ve put a lot of effort into, but it’s not delivering. It’s not solving the problem that you were trying to address. Don’t be afraid to stop, take account of what’s going on. Really look at you at the data/information that you have, and don’t be afraid to change approach, or change the project. Don’t deny that the fact that’s happening. It’s okay to fail and if your senior leaders aren’t allowing you that safe space to be able to fail, then you’re not in a sustainable Lean. Failure is the best way to learn.

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