Ali Banholzer So getting started, I think all business owners have a little bit of a gut instinct of, you know, as long as I’ve been talking, and you’ve been talking, they’ve probably been like, “Yeah, we got a problem here. I know we’ve got a problem here.” Which means your employees know you’ve got a problem there. So first, just start… it’s not a perfect process. It doesn’t have to be a perfect process. There’s nobody watching you saying, “You’re doing this right. You’re doing this wrong.” You don’t need to use the proper terms and definitions. You know, in Lean Six Sigma, they talk all the time “Going to Gemba”. What the heck is “Going to Gemba”? All that is, walk around your shop floor and watch your employees work. See what you notice. Do you notice that they’re chronically looking for x part to fix the embroidery machine? Do you know? Are they always looking for an allen wrench to change out the hoop? Marshall Atkinson Do you know? Yeah, right, and Go to Gemba domain means to get out of your office buddy. Ali Banholzer Yeah, get out of your office, walk around and watch. So, a lot of Lean Six Sigma is cultural. It’s your business culture, not cultural is in Japanese cultural, cultural isn’t. It’s your business culture. You have to instill a mission and culture in your business that you want continual improvement. I know I’m harping on that, but you want constant, continual improvement, and that constant, continual improvement will make their jobs easier and more profitable for them. So gut instinct, dive in to you know is the problem, and get your employees together, take 10minutes to brainstorm— “how can we fix this?” But then you come up with a plan. If you take 10 minutes with them to brainstorm and you all agree we’re going to fix, we’re going to fix the layout of the embroidery department. Great. Now, you spent 10 minutes with them, they’re back to work. Go into your office and devise a plan. Don’t just half-ass it. Like I said in the beginning, what’s the problem? What’s the end goal? What’s the scope? Who does it impact? Start there. Then, how are you going to know if you met that goal? I’m sure a lot of us have heard about smart goals. You know, you set the goal. It’s got to be measurable. You’ve got to help me out here — specific, measurable, attainable… Marshall Atkinson I use achievable, but it’s the same thing… realistic, and time bound. Ali Banholzer Yep. So it’s the same sort of thing to find your project, how are you going to measure it? How are you going to know when you’ve achieved that goal? How are you going to implement it? What are you going to implement and how are you going to control it? So it doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, you don’t have to have fancy tools, you just have to be committed to doing it and follow through. Marshall Atkinson So one thing I think is important here is just the concept of the team, because it can’t be you doing all the work. And way back when I was in college, I took a leadership class, and the instructor imparted us these words of wisdom that have stuck with me ever since, which is: “Man supports what he helps create.” And this is really all about getting everybody’s support, getting everybody’s ideas, getting everybody’s knowledge and skills, and experience and training, and viewpoints all together to help solve the problem. Because if they’re doing all that, they’re more apt to find the answers that work, they’re more apt to get things that stick, they’re more apt to get everything moving in the right direction, and actually continue to do it later. This is how you keep your control going. This also helps build your shop culture so there’s a lot of reasons to do it this way.
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