Monday, September 19, 2016

The Easiest Part of Fixing What Bugs You

Making things better can be tricky. The tricky part is learning to notice what's wrong in an active way, not just in a bitching and moaning and blowing-it-off sort of way. Fortunately, there is a trick to it. What usually bugs us is waste, and there is an acronym that helps us learn to see waste. The acronym is T.I.M. W.O.O.D.S. Meaning:

Transportation
Inventory
Movement
Waiting
Over-production (the number one waste)
Over-processing
Defects and
Skills (the saddest waste).

When you get in the habit of learning to recognize these forms of waste, you are halfway done fixing them.

So, if recognizing waste is a trick you can learn, what's the easiest part of continuous improvement? The easiest part is, of course, coming up with solutions! As soon as you see the problem, you automatically see the solution. That's how our brains work. We are problem solving machines! We are making too many donuts, is the waste of over production. The solution? Stop making so many extra donuts! The answer is in the question.

Simple. Right? So, why is continuous improvement so difficult? Because it's always hard to change. It is always hard to get things done.

My suggestion is to schedule a half hour every morning, for making improvements. Make it part of your morning cleanup, your morning preparation, your morning routine. You grab a coffee, you clean up your work area, you make an improvement. When you are working in groups, you take a step forward on whatever your assignment was. Look up busiest day for donut sales? Done. Next day, breakdown donut sales by types. Done. Next day, put together a donut graph. Just one step forward every morning, first thing.

First thing every morning, make your life a little better. It's addictive. Especially when today's improvement makes every day a little bit better.

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