OEM Consultants Inc. and NRC-IRAP are Seeking Innovative Companies Who Want to Explore the Advantages of Combining Lean & Clean Together!

NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) has invited OEM Consultants Inc. to coach and guide Canadian SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises – 500 employees or less) through NRC’s new Lean and Clean Pilot Program.
OEM Consultants Inc. and NRC-IRAP are encouraging the participation of SMEs who are interested in implementing a 3 to 4 month “Lean & Clean” improvement event within their company. This “Lean & Clean” pilot project is scheduled to run between March and October 2008 only. During this Pilot Project, NRC-IRAP is committed to support 50% of the cost of working with an OEM Lean & Clean Consultant and up to 80% of employee salaries for those employees who work on a Lean & Clean project!

Did you know that as much as 50% of your company’s energy costs
could be due to compressed air alone?

If you are just starting or even if you have already begun your Lean journey, now is a great time to implement the “Lean & Clean” program and reap its rewards. You can transform your Continuous Improvement culture by incorporating all forms of “Lean & Clean” Waste management in areas such as Energy, Water and Materials.

OEM and NRC-IRAP view SMEs as the strategic backbone of the Canadian economy and they are committed to working with SMEs to help them realize their full potential. By incorporating knowledge and innovation along with strategic opportunities, jobs and prosperity for all Canadians can be achieved. To that end, OEM and NRC-IRAP plan to implement several pilot Lean & Clean Projects in order to:
1.Increase 3 P awareness: People, Planet and Profit.
2.Encourage SMEs to go further down the path of Lean. Thereby increasing productivity, innovation and the adaptation of new technology.
3.Improve traditional Lean by placing an emphasis on the importance of and variation that exists within Environmental Waste types. All wastes are not equal.
4.Foster the adoption of the new Lean & Clean tool.
5.Improve environmental performance of SMEs.
6.Assist in subsequent research and development projects.
7.Provide case study presentations at the AME Conference in Toronto in the Fall of 2008.

What does this mean for your company?
Step One – Commit to Lean & Clean
OEM will meet at the SME with the local Industrial Technology Advisor (ITA) to perform the initial Lean & Clean appraisal. SME representatives will then assess whether there is merit and commitment to move forward with a Lean & Clean initiative at the SME. Assuming a go forward decision has been made; OEM will help the SME identify a Value Stream Champion. The Champion will then select implementation team members and assess the resources required to make change happen. OEM’s philosophy is to do Lean & Clean with clients, not to them.
Step Two – Choose the Value Stream
OEM will work together with ITA and the SME to develop an IRAP Proposal within a specific Value Stream at the SME. From this solid Lean thinking foundation, SMEs will have the best opportunity to achieve Lean & Clean results, rather than create islands of excellence that do not improve flow to customer.
Step Three – Learn about Lean & Clean
OEM will provide training (based on EPA “The Lean & Environment Toolkit”) to key SME team members to advance their Lean thinking to include:
1.Providing benefits to customers and team members by learning to see environmental wastes.
2.Being able to identify environmental wastes.
3.Knowing where to look for environmental wastes using value stream mapping, thinking tools and techniques, specifically:
- Using icons to identify processes with Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) opportunities.
- Recording environmental data about processes in Value Stream Maps.
Analyzing materials: use versus need in a “materials line” for Value Stream Maps.
- Expanding the application of Value Stream Mapping to natural resource flows.
- Finding Lean and Environment opportunities in Future State Value Stream Maps.
4.How to organize and carry out effective Lean & Clean Kaizen Events.
- Train Lean Team leaders to recognize EHS impacts.
Identify an EHS contact for Kaizen Event Teams.
- Use an EHS checklist for Lean events to identify EHS needs.
Proactively involve EHS staff in Lean events.
5.Use Lean & Clean process mapping tools to “drill down” into processes to more clearly see the point of Environmental Waste and the opportunity to eliminate it.
6.Employ the 5S technique of workplace organization/standardization to include safety concerns to both personnel and the environment. OEM has helped clients achieve results with 5S plus Safety for many years and will bring solid real-world experience to any NRC-IRAP SME client.
Step Four – Map the Current State
SME team and OEM will map the current state of the chosen Value Stream, identify Lean & Clean wastes, and determine the root cause of those wastes.
Step Five – Choose Lean & Clean Metrics
OEM will facilitate the SME team to identify and choose Lean & Clean metrics as well as establish baselines.
Step Six – Map the Future State
OEM will coach the SME team to map the Future State and establish targets for Lean & Clean Metrics.
Step Seven – Choose Kaizen Plans
OEM will coach the SME Team to choose improvement activities (Kaizen Plans) necessary to achieve the Future State.
Step Eight – Implement Kaizen Plans
OEM will provide Kaizen Project/Event training and coaching that will include methods of effective accountability during the implementation process. OEM and the SME Team will determine a step-by-step Implementation Plan to achieve the desired Future State (and target Metrics).
Step Nine – Final Reporting (Sharing & Celebrating Success)
OEM will coach the SME team to celebrate their success of reaching Future State goals at the SME location. OEM will prepare and present the following to SME and NRC-IRAP:
1.A two page Lean & Clean Case Study
2.A technical Lean & Clean report. This report will include a series of recommendations for future more technically involved projects (Type 2 Projects)
3.An achieved Future State Lean & Clean Metrics report
4.OEM will work to co-present the case study with the SME at the AME Conference in Toronto in the Fall of 2008.

For more on Lean and Clean, contact Pierre Stoute or Tammy Janz at OEM Consultants Inc.

Pierre Stoute, P.Eng. is a Partner with OEM Consultants. To learn more about OEM Consultants, Lean and Clean, and Value Stream Mapping contact Pierre at ps@oemconsultants.ca

Tammy Janz, P.Eng., Lean Specialist with OEM Consultants, is a dynamic Leader of Change with an extensive background in Lean Manufacturing. To learn more about OEM Consultants, Lean and Clean, Lean 101, and the Lean Certificate Course contact tj@oemconsultants.ca.

Are You Marketing Your Ideavirus?

We have covered in the last four newsletters several important aspects of marketing. Branding and telling your story, understanding the importance of new media and the world of web 2.0, one of the most important web 2.0 marketing channels social networking and the importance of your internet presence through search engine optimization. As we continue to talk about the many ways to utilize the internet to market your products and services I thought that it was important to discuss viral marketing next.
Viral marketing can be defined as a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message. Viral marketing is a modern technique which utilizes the power and popularity of online social networks to enhance brand awareness. As with Social Media Marketing, the essence of this technique is harnessing the power of the internet and using self replicating processes which encourage people to pass on marketing messages in a voluntary fashion.
Viral Marketing is found through existing social networks and is most frequently done through the use of:

- Online Video Clips
- Advergames
- Online Images
- SMS Text Messages

Some of the viral marketing techniques the typical business website can deploy now include:
Encourage Links to Your Site
You can do a number of things to encourage links to your site. Register with search engines, of course, and seek reciprocal links. Here are some approaches designed to set up an exponential response to your efforts.

Write articles and encourage other to post them free as content for their site. If you're an expert in a particular area, write an article about an aspect of it. Then offer it to complementary sites to post on their site as free content, so long as the article contains links to your site. Your article could go far and wide, especially if it is carried on the wings of e-mail to others who will distribute the same article to their network of contacts.

Set up an affiliate program to encourage links to your products. Affiliate programs are a form of network marketing that provides financial incentive for other sites to link to yours. Make sure you pay enough to make this attractive to already-saturated siteowners.

Send out news releases concerning a free service or product available on your site. The key here is to have a truly newsworthy event, contest, free service, or digital download. If your news release is carried by just 5% of the media you send it to, you could have your URL in front of tens of thousands of readers quite inexpensively.

Best selling author and agent of change Seth Godin, wrote this distinction for viral marketing in one of his blogs, I thought it clearly articulated the importance and distinction of this most important marketing tool. “Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that's it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.
Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn't have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.) The Mona Lisa is an ideavirus.
This distinction is vital.
For one thing, it means that constant harassment of the population doesn't increase the chances of something becoming viral. It means that most organizations should realize that they have a better chance with word of mouth (more likely to occur, more manageable, more flexible) and focus on that. And it means, most of all, that viral marketing is like winning the lottery, and if you've got a shot at an ideavirus, you might as well over-invest and do whatever it takes to create something virus-worthy.”

Nicole Mckinney is Principle Marketing Specialist of marketing firm bcad Group. Building Art and Creating Design for your brand. To learn more about how OEM Consultants and Nicole can help your company standout in the marketplace. Email Nicole at nicole.mckinney@sympatico.ca

Art is the author of the LEI workbook Creating Level Pull: a lean production-system improvement guide for production control, operations, and engineering professionals, which received a 2005 Shingo Research Prize. He was inducted into the Shingo Prize Academy in 2006. Art learned about lean manufacturing while living, studying, and working in Japan for 10 years as one of the first foreign nationals to work for Toyota. He spent the majority of his Toyota career helping the company transfer its production, engineering, and management systems to facilities around the world. After leaving Toyota, Art became director of lean production operations at Donnelly Corp., (now part of Magna Inc.), a tier one automotive supplier with more than 15 plants in North America and Europe. Art subsequently joined McKinsey & Company, where he was the firm’s leading expert in lean manufacturing. He currently aids companies implementing lean through Art of Lean.

Recently Darren Zawislak, OEM Valuestream newsletter editor has had the pleasure of interviewing Art Smalley about his new workbook “Understanding A3 Thinking”.

Darren: Congratulations on the release of your new workbook. When will it be available?

Art Smalley: The book; Understanding A3 Thinking is currently available through Amazon.com and Productivity Press. The content is about Toyota’s unique habit of writing problem solving, proposals and status review reports on a single A3 sized page. The book outlines the background and logic behind this technique while providing examples and instruction to the reader on the key points involved in writing these reports.

Darren: What kinds of responses are you expecting from your new workbook?

Art Smalley: Myself and co-author Prof. Durward Sobek really don’t know what to expect. It may sell a few hundred copies or a few thousand. Our audience is the general lean practitioner who has probably heard about the topic and would like to learn more.

Darren: Is the workbook tailored to a specific type of business or is it applicable to a wide variety?

Art Smalley: The book has been structured to meet the needs of a general audience. There is already a workbook on A3’s in Health care and we did not want to write another niche book like that one. Anyone in manufacturing, sales, purchasing, etc. should be able to read the content and find something useful. A3 Thinking contains a lot of parallels with problem solving and the scientific method of thinking so it is widely applicable. The nice thing about A3’s is that anyone can write one regardless if they are the president of the company or a front line supervisor. In this respect it is more useful then Standardized Work or Value Stream Mapping. Although there is a fair amount of instruction within the book it is our intent to follow up this effort with a how to guide later this year based on interest. We are hopeful that this initial effort is enough to get most people started.

Darren: What would a company, or an individual need to do to embrace A3 Thinking and make it a part of their culture?

Art Smalley: Just starting is the first key point. After that, the types of questions outlined in the book need to become part of the culture. A3 thinking really is invisible and a thought process. It takes practice and discipline to get better at it. In my opinion there is no magic way to introduce it over night and then get it to stick.

Darren: Many people I have spoken with are critical about new ideas and methods, feeling that they are not practical or sustainable. What is it about A3 Thinking that makes it more advantageous than other programs? What separates it from the “flavor of the month”?

Art Smalley: It really should not be thought of as a “program” since it is a pattern of thinking that is basically problem solving, the scientific method, and a brief way to summarize things. If it becomes an activity like Quality Control circles or Value Stream Mapping then practitioners have missed the point I’m afraid. It needs to become a part of the regular thought process. I hope this brief overview has been helpful to your readership.

Darren: Thank you very much for your time. Your comments have really hit home for me.