Creating a Continuous Improvement Culture: Play Your Role

Reflecting back to when I was first starting to learn about Continuous improvement, there was one takeaway that still holds strong to this day that I’d like to share with you.

It was a cold January day when I was working for a retail company called Tractor Supply Company, when the VP of Logistics and Supply Chain Mike Graham calls me into his office. As a young industrial engineer, I was eager to see what he wanted. Mike said, “Dan, I want you to go and learn about this topic called Lean.” Excitedly I said, “OK! Great!” I left his office promptly to start my new quest and went back to my desk thinking “now what?” At this time there was not a lot of information on Lean. It was mysterious, a guarded secret sauce. I got my hands on two great books – The Toyota Way by Jeff Liker and Lean Thinking by Jim Womack.

After studying, I asked our buyers if any of our suppliers did Lean in their manufacturing operations. The answer was yes, and since we were a customer it was easy to get in. They set me up with one of our suppliers in Willard, Ohio. I participated in my first Kaizen event with two other operations managers. My team worked on a Kanban Kaizen to create a pull system, while the other team worked on a 5S event to create a visual, organized work space. The experience was cool. The operations managers were impressed and thought there was some power in this Lean tool.

When I returned, Mike asked me how my visit was. I told him it was good but that it seemed like Industrial Engineering 101. The next words that came from his mouth changed my career. He said, “Dan, would I rather have two or three smart industrial engineers working to fix our company’s problems, or would I prefer all 3000+ employees thinking like industrial engineers and solving their own problems.”

Since that conversation, my perspective of being in a continuous improvement role has changed. We all have a part to play in creating a Lean culture. There are six key positions that must be filled within an organization to ensure long-lasting change: Executive Sponsor, Champion, Process Owner, Team Lead, Team Member, and Continuous Improvement Coach. There are many factors to consider when deciding how formal to make these roles, such as the size of your organization but each one should be filled. 

The table below gives an example of each role and its purpose. There is also a great book called Creating a Lean Culture by David Mann. The book does a nice job laying out a plan for tiered accountability and provides additional guidance on the topic.

Having a Continuous Improvement mindset is everyone’s job.

In the beginning, the Executive Sponsors must take a highly active role and ensure everyone is doing their part. It is difficult to change the collective mindset of the organization at first. Often the CI Champion has the desire to cancel continuous improvement initiatives due to the focus on production. Even with this urge to put off CI activities in favor of production, CI professionals should use problem solving skills to achieve both goals. Many times, the Process Owners are a confused in the beginning because they can no longer serve as “firefighters.” Team Leader positions are sometimes not part of the organizational structure and need to be scoped and defined.

Team Members love Continuous Improvement. They know have an avenue to fix the things that bug them most. When Team Members are empowered, amazing things can happen. They watch the Leaders, and the more trust fostered between them, and the more doors that are opened, the greater the accomplishments are. Leaders have to keep an eye on other Leaders that may be closing doors and help coach them through the change to enable trust to grow. Remember that the formula for trust is consistent behavior over time. Like culture change, building trust takes time.

During the past three years at Xylem, I have been teaching and educating our leaders about these roles. We have experienced failure where we have not had all the roles represented. Although it looks easy, roles need to stay on the forefront of everyone’s mind. There needs to be a constant reminder of roles when the team loses focus. An example of this is the C.I. coaches are lectured if the final report invitation comes from them and not the executive sponsor. Any time we play someone else part the chance for long term sustainment goes down. It takes everyone calling each other out when the roles are not being followed. Play your role!

Just think of the power of all Xylem employees thinking like industrial engineers and fixing their own problems to achieve the target condition. The world, or at least that site, would be a better place to work.

Lean Blessings,

Dan

Dan Davis joined Xylem in 2015 and is responsible for driving Continuous Improvement across AWS. His key focus areas include driving the vision and roadmap for the Company’s continuous improvement initiatives, implementing robust tools and measurement methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma, and leading the Company toward best-in-class status in operations and transactional activities.

Prior to his current role Mr. Davis held several leadership roles at FMC Technologies, including Continuous improvement Leader & Plant Manager. Prior to that, he served in a series of increasingly responsible leadership roles in the industrial businesses for the Stanley Black & Decker, Global Continuous Improvement Leader and Plant Manager Responsibility. At Tractor Supply Company, Mr. Davis was responsible for launching their Continuous Improvement Program (Tractor Value System).

Mr. Davis earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineer from Milwaukee School of Engineering