Lean Excellence Self Assessment
The following 20 questions are a brief assessment of your enterprise in terms of lean best practices. The questions are typical symptoms of a Non-Lean environment. If you answer 'Yes' more than 5 times you probably need assistance.
- Can communication be improved, both internally within your organisation and externally with business partners?
- Do you have a feeling you are dealing with the syptoms rather than the root cause?
- Do you spend most of your time fighting fires?
- Do you need to develop teamwork and empower people to do other activities?
- Do you need to reduce your lead times, are they becoming non-competitive?
- Can your work scheduling and inventory management be more effective?
- Do you hold excesssive inventory?
- Do you make or purchase products in large batch sizes?
- Do you often have disruptions from unexpected stoppages?
- Do you 'Push' products and services through your processes rather than 'Pull' to customer demand?
- Does your material and information flow have many steps, queues and delays?
- Is there minimal focus on reducing waste activities in the eyes of the customer?
- Is there no Value Stream Mapping of your product families to control continuous improvements?
- 5S Housekeeping: Are there unneccessary items visible and clutter the workplace?
- Is there no company policy for an organised and clean environment at all times?
- Are there inconsistencies in product and service quality?
- Is there a need to standardise work cycles and operating practices?
- Is there focus on reducing the number of changeover times rather than recognising rapid changeovers are the key to flexibility?
- Can customer service be improved with better delivery in full-on-time in specification (DIFOTIS)?
- Are there few or no Visual Performance Measures (KPI's) to establish how your business is performing