Change Management Using PDCA–The Act Step Part 2 | Operational Excellence Quick Hits

Speaker 1: (00:06)
In last week’s session, we talked about the plan, Do, Check, Act cycle and the Act step, and the two elements of the Act step. The first element is “Standardize the Improvement” and the second element is “Establish Controls”. So today we’re going to talk about the “Establish Control”. So once you do the proper planning, you implement your permanent countermeasures, you check to see, those primitive countermeasures are actually solve the problem or solve the situation that you’re looking at. Then you standardize that improvement. Then the most important step is to establish those controls so that you don’t backslide.

Speaker 1: (00:44)
So the elements here that are needed are to make sure that the gains are sustained, communicate success, and establish the audit process. So the things that we need to have in place here are process monitoring, visual management, our daily walk process, lessons learned, and layered process audits. So of course we want to do process monitoring.

Speaker 1: (01:09)
So there’s all types of process monitoring techniques you can do. So hour by hour charts, so depending on the situation or process that you’re looking at, you’re going to choose different tools to be able to monitor that process. And again, we want that feedback instantaneously or really close to the process outputs so that we can determine if bullet process is actually performing as intended. Then of course, visual management helps support that. So if we know what normal looks like, then of course we can spot abnormal. Also, establishing the daily walk process. So the daily walk process is designed to give management feedback on the process to identify process abnormalities. So we have rules during this daily walk. You’re only allowed to ask questions. You can not offer solutions, you cannot discipline. You can use it as a coaching method to ask questions, to get the people in the process, to understand the importance of maintaining normal conditions. So again, the Socratic method is a questioning probing technique to explore underlying beliefs and to understand what their mindset is that’s not allowing them to stay in the process and creating the abnormalities.

Speaker 1: (02:29)
So typically what causes the abnormalities is special-cause variation. So if we can identify that special-cause variation. Then we can address the issue on the spot, coach the employees, and make sure that they follow the rules of the process.

Speaker 1: (02:48)
In addition, we want to put layered process audits. So we want to create layered process audits to ensure that the process is staying within the normal conditions and the layered process audit, of course, there’s different layers of management going out and auditing the process at different random times to make sure that the process is sustaining. So if we sustain the process, then that becomes the foundation for the next process improvement.