One-Hour Low Tech Lean Introduction

Today was a lesson for me in just-in-time delivery of Lean training (or Lean Lean training) and also in the value of being prepared. We arrived half a day late to a distribution center where we were asked to give Lean overview training to the warehouse managers. We had prepared fifty plus PowerPoint slides complete with Lean fundamentals, a simulation, three case studies, and a road map to implementation, everything had asked for. We had a plan.
But no plan goes according to plan. Arriving late, we were asked to give one-hour low tech lean introduction rather than the slick presentation we had prepared for to the group of managers, since time was limited. Twelve of us crowded into an office.
Think fast: if you have only 60 minutes, no visual aids and you have to communicate what is most important about Lean, what would you say?
Looking back, there were 10 main points. We spent the most time on topics 3, 4, 5, 6. Here is the recipe:
1. Where does Lean come from?
2. Why has Toyota been so successful?
3. “Kaizen and respect for people”
4. What are the 7 types of waste?
5. What is 5S and how does it make waste visible?
6. What is flow and how does it make problems visible?
7. What is takt time and how do we use it?
8. What should we do when you find a problem?
9. What is the role of standards in Lean?
10. What is the role of the manager in a Lean company?
To these ingredients add your own experiences, ask for examples from the audience, and stir. Sprinkle impressive kaizen statistics as appropriate. At the end of one hour your audience will have a better understanding of Lean and how it applies to them.
As in Lean, less is more when doing presentations. This off-the-cuff (or just-in-time) training resulted in good discussion among the managers. “Let’s take a walk and see if we can have a discussion about the wastes in our facility” said the director and we all took a ninety minute gemba walk across half a million square feet of warehouse.

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