Lean For Life: Your work cell

First let me thank you for the enthusiasm shown in getting in to lean for life early birds list. Lots of you have got in to the early birds list. I will make sure all of you who got in to the early birds list will get the link one day before the rest of the world. And you will be eligible for the introductory discounts too. If you have not got in to the early birds list yet, please follow this link and get in to the early birds list now. You can make sure you grab your copy of “Lean for Life”. As I told you earlier, I am going to issue only a limited number of copies of this eBook. By being in the early birds list you will be able to get the chance to grab your copy for sure as I am going to send you the download link a day before. In Addition, you will be able to get the introductory discount for the product too. This product is handled through the secure servers of ClickBank. Lean for life comes with a 60 day 100% no questions asked money back guarantee. So absolutely no risk for you. Even better, I am asking you to try lean for life in the first 59 Days, if you do not see at least a 200% ROI, you must ask for a refund. ClickBank will make sure you get the 100% refund. Nothing to lose. You are 100% safe. But you have to be in the early birds list to get the chance to get your copy of this limited issue. Follow this link to get in to our early birds list now.

Now back to today’s topic.

Work cell is a very important building block of lean. A work cell is a part of the manufacturing chain, which will perform a certain duty to its completion. For an example, a work cell would assemble a power belt for a motor completely within itself.

In work cell, employees are multi skilled, that is they can perform the work of each other. In a work cell people have all the equipment to perform their job for the completion. They have to move minimally. Work cell contains optimal ergonomic conditions to work. Work cells bring effectiveness of work. It makes the team sprit high. Work cell makes people happy as they can see the end result of the product or the part they are working on.

When we think about this, the technique of work cell can be applied in our day to day lives very easily but for very high effect. Think for a moment. We all are multi skilled in our personal lives. We have to perform the duties of the worker when we are working, we have to perform the duty of the mother or the father when we are home, we have to perform the duty of the cook while we are cooking and the role of house keeper and the role of a driver and so on. So our life demands and commands us to be multi skilled. So how we become efficient and effective at what we do. How we can become happier while we perform our day to day duties.

The golden rule of the work cell is being self sufficient. For an example if you are fixing a pump to a car, you need to have all the equipment to do this without any problems. You need to have the skill to do this within your work cell. Similarly, in each of the roles you play in your life, you have to have skill and the equipment to make them success.

Let’s take the simple example of reading something. Let’s say you are reading Lean for Life on your computer. So you are performing an important function. You are learning an important set of skills for your personal life. You have to complete reading the book without any problem so that you can take the full advantages of the tools and techniques of lean for life. Now you are in a work place, now you are in the work place of reading. What are the tools you need to complete reading the book effectively? You would need your computer, you would need a desk, you would need good lighting and if possible a silent room. In fact this is what you need to read anything. If you are reading a printed book, you would need the book on the table. So this is your reading work cell. You already have acquired the skill to read already. So you are competent in the skills area. Now you have to make sure you have only what you need to perform your function.

So you have to arrange your desk in the perfect manner to perform your work effectively. You have to remove all the unnecessary things from your desk. If you have used your desk as a store to store magazines and books, you may need to empty your desktop. Keep the things in right order. You may need to get a writing pad near you with a pen, in case you want to take notes in the old way. When you are done, you will feel the difference. You focus will be in what you read. You will spend less time in searching for things. Everything you need will be at your disposal. You will feel the joy of learning the skills, in this case skills of lean for life.

Let me give you another example. When you are driving, you are in a work cell. You are in the driving seat to perform a job. It is to drive from point A to Point B. What do you need to perform the work effectively? Obviously your car should be in good shape with all the mechanics going right. Apart from that, you should have whatever you want to have while driving in your arms reach. For an example you would need to have the remote control for your audio setup. You would need to have the CD or DVDs in your reach. This list is customizable according to your personal habits. But I think you get the idea. This will make sure you drive with a high degree of focus. There will be less chance for an accident.

We can do the same exercise for the kitchen. You can do the same exercise for your bathroom. I leave it to you. In lean for life I discuss very effective lean tools and techniques in the context of your personal lives. You will find them interesting for sure. These tools and techniques will open up a new ways to save money, time and energy. So you would have more money to spend, more time to relax while working less.

BTW, If you haven’t got to lean for life early birds list yet, do it now by following this link. I am going to issue only a limited number of copies. By getting in to the early birds list you will be able to make sure you get your copy. I will give you the link one day before the rest of the world. In addition by being in the early birds list, you will be able to get the introductory discount to this eBook too. To get in to the early birds list, follow this link.

Lean For Life: 5 Why at your service

In the last post we discussed about the lean for life approach to problem solving. We discussed the 4 step approach to solve any problem in our day to day lives. Today I am going you to teach you one of the simplest and one of the most effective lean tools you can use in your personal life.

But before starting on this tool, let me answer few of the questions you had about the last post. Most of you have asked for more details about lean for life. I should have done a better job introducing lean for life before. But now is better than never.

Lean for Life is an eBook written by me. This eBook gives a very different meaning to lean. In fact this is the first and only of this kind according to my knowledge. This eBook shows you how to implement lean, where it matters most. This eBook shows you how to have more money to spend, how to have more time to relax while working less by applying the time tested and proven techniques, tools and concepts of lean. Yes, this is about applying lean concepts, tools and techniques in your own day to day life.

This eBook is not in the market yet. But it will be out soon. I am going to distribute only a very limited number of copies. I am planning to price this eBook at $47. I have given the authorization to ClickBank who is one of the largest information product sellers online to handle all the work for me. ClickBank is secure and have done billions of dollars worth business. They are in business for over 10 years. I am 100% confident on the technicalities of the work. When you buy the book for just $47, you will be able to immediately download the eBook as a PDF file. You will be able to go through all the tools and techniques explained in the book within a matter of hours and start implementing them in your day to day life.

When you read the book if it is not worth every penny you paid, just ask ClickBank to return your money. They will do it willingly with no questions asked. This gets even better. I am giving you an extended personal money back guarantee. You have 60 Days to try the product. In this first 60 Days, if you couldn’t get at least a 200% of ROI, I am asking you to get your money back. Just let ClickBank know. They will return your money. So you have ZERO risk.

As I am going to issue only a limited number of copies, I want to give my readers the preference. So I have put up an early birds list on the main website. You can enter your name and email there. When you become a member of the early birds list, you will get the link to the product one day before the rest of the world. So you will be able to make sure you secure your copy of this eBook.

I am planning to give an Early Birds discount too. If you are in my early birds list, you can expect to receive a healthy discount (Only till I decide to take it off). So follow this link and subscribe to the early birds list. Get the best chance to secure your copy of “Lean For Life” and eligible for your discount.

OK, back to the tool. 5 Why? is the simplest of tools when it comes to understanding and using. But it is one of the most effective tools. 5 Why makes it easier to find the root causes to the problem. This is one of the tools I am going to great detail in “Lean For Life”.

Let’s identify a day to day problem. Let’s say your car is breaking down frequently. So we will try to find the root cause to this problem. Let’s begin by questioning the problem itself.

Question: Why my car is breaking down frequently?

Answer: Because it is not in good mechanical condition

Question: Why it is not in good mechanical condition?

Answer: I do not do regular maintenance

Question: Why don’t you do the regular maintenance?

Answer: Because I do not have time to go to get this done

Question: Why don’t you have time to go to get maintenance done?

Answer: Maintenance is on the weekdays and it is not possible for me to be there on week days

Question: Why Maintenance is on weekdays?

Answer: Because my service place doesn’t operate on weekends

Now you have a very clear idea to the cause of the problem. Now what you should do? You have to find a service or maintenance agent who works on weekends.

You may need to ask few more WHY’s or less WHY’s to get to one of the root cause for the problem. This depends on your problem. You might have several root causes to the problem too. Then you will have to repeat this exercise few times.

I think you find it interesting. Apply this technique now for your problems and find out the causes. This will help you to find a permanent solution to the problem.

More Lean for life is on your way. Make sure you get your copy of “Lean For Life”. Get in to our early birds list by following this link Now.

Have a Nice Day!

Lean For Life: The 4 Step Problems Solving Technique

I started studying lean years back. My initial target was to implement it in the work place. Yes, lean was very useful in my work. But with time, with the understanding on the principles of lean, I figured out one important thing. I figured out, lean is easiest to be applied in our day to day lives and it brings results much faster. I am following its concepts and using its techniques and tools for good effect ever since I realized this. It has given me good results. I think it will be for you too. This is what I am going to teach you in lean for life. I am going to teach you how to unleash the power of lean, in your day to day life.

Let’s begin with one important formula. I call this the 4 Step Problem solving formula. I figured this out while I study the concepts of lean. But it was not written anywhere. But ultimately lean problem solving followed this simple but very effective formula. I thought this is very important to all of us. So I have devoted a complete chapter for this technique in my eBook “Lean For Life”. I explained this in details with practical day to day example.

4 Step Problem Solving Formula

Lean follows below 4 simple steps to solve problems. This is true for any case. I found this will be very important in our day to day life. Here are the 4 steps right from the lean for life eBook.

Step 1. Find out the problem

Step 2. Find out what creates the problem

Step 3. Think about how to overcome the problem and focus on a solution and plan the implementation

Step 4. Implement the solution

OK seems simple enough. But I am sure you would like to have a good example to explain this better. I will pick something from my own life.

Step 1: Identify the Problem:

- I have a problem of reading the books completely. I have a pile of uncompleted books in the queue to be read.

So I know there is a problem. So let’s find out what creates this problem. Yes, we are going to do a root cause analysis. (BTW, I am providing you a simple but very effective root cause analysis tool to be used in your day to day life in the lean for life eBook)

Step 2: Find out what creates the problem:

I have little time to complete reading my books. Why?

- I am working on the computer mostly, and I am use to reading online. So I have lost apatite to read printed stuff. And my work setup doesn’t allow me to read printed books easily.

- Books sometimes are way too long. They repeat the same thing over and over again. They run into hundreds of pages, but even if I manage to complete reading them, at the end, I feel like I have wasted time. (I am sure this is true for you as well. How many times you have complete reading a book, but thought to yourself at the end, all those pages could have been condensed to 10-20 pages)

- Sometimes I just buy books. I really do not have a need to buy the book. But I buy them for the fun of buying. Generally I read the books from the authors who I know for some time. And I read the books recommended by my friends. But when I just buy books without looking at these aspects, I lose the interest to read them.

OK, now we know why we do not read the books, despite the fact that they can add great value to our lives. So what is the solution?

Step 3: Finding the solution and planning the implementation:

What shall I do to complete reading the books? How can I eliminate this problem in future?

- Because I am getting more comfortable in reading online, I am going to look for the “e” versions of the books. I now look for the eBooks or the kindle versions of the books from Amazon first. This helps me to read the books with ease. In fact, when I get the eBooks instead of printed versions, I find it easier to store because there is no need for physical storage space. It is much easier to find the books. It is much easier to find the stuff within the books as well. So I enhance my reading efficiency and the effectiveness. I save lots of time and fair bit of money because the e versions of the books are less costly than the normal books.

- For what I have bought already, I am going to sort them to must reads and fun reads. In the process I might find books might not need to be read right now. So I can keep them aside for a moment. And I am going to have half an hour per day to read must reads first. This way I will be able to finish an average book in two weeks or so. Yes, still a fair bit of time. But that’s good compared with not reading them at all.

- I will give special attention to the length of the book before I buy them. If they are too long, I will give special attention to what others have to say about the book. I can turn to Amazon user comments for this. But if the book is shorter and if it can be read in few hours, it is worth trying.

Step 4: Implementing the solutions:

Now I have a clear plan as to what to be done. Now I will simply follow my plan.

- I am sorting the books as per the plan. I selected the book to be read first. Then I will give myself a half an hour a day to complete reading this book

- In future, when I buy a book, I will look for the eVersion of the book first.

OK, I guess this approach is clear to you. This way you can simply save lots of time and effort. You can save the time for something useful or just to relax. In my case I will be able to save some money by buying the e versions of the books instead of the printed copies. A simple lean technique saved us time and effort and some money almost instantly.

I think you enjoyed this. You will receive more lean for life tools and techniques in the time to come. Have a Nice Day!

Where lean can be most effective?

As we discussed in our last post, lean has found tremendous success in variety of industries and sectors. Lean is successful in manufacturing industry, lean is successful in offices, lean is successful in military, lean is successful in hospitals. This list simply keeps growing.

All these organizations have achieved their expected results. They have earned more money in the form of profits, they have saved thousands of hours in time and they have achieved long terms organizational health or the organizational stability.

These successful lean followers have found their success because they did not copy from others, because they were honest, because they invested on learning and because they had some control over the needs of the people running the organization.

But out of all these where lean is most effective? In other words, where lean can be applied with least effort for the maximum result?

Is it the manufacturing industry, because lean has originated with a manufacturing focus? Or is it the military as it is the most disciplined? Or can it be something else? What do you think? Take a moment and think for yourself. Where lean is most effective?

OK, got your own answer? Yes I have my own. But let me take you through the thinking behind my answer first.

For lean to be most effective, you should be able to implement lean with the least amount of effort. Do you agree?

So where lean can be implemented with least effort? We will have to put least effort in implementing lean when we have everything in our control. Is this correct? Where do you have everything under your control? Definitely not in where you work, right? Even not to 100% in your family, correct? Then where it is? Give me a second. I will explain. But before that let’s tackle the next question too.

For lean to be most effective, you should be able to get the direct benefits of lean, correct? If you apply lean in your organization, even if it is successful, you will not get the full benefit. Benefit will be divided, and sometimes even the people who didn’t got involved in any which way in your lean efforts will get the benefit. This is same for any place where you apply lean except for one place.

You have a one place, when you apply lean, you have the full control. On the other hand, when you apply lean here, you will have the 100% of the benefit. Yes, you are correct. This is,

Your own life

Welcome to “Lean For Life”. I am going to teach you how to use the power of proven and time tested concepts and techniques of lean in your day to day life to achieve the similar results your organization would want to achieve. That is I am going to show you how to have more money to spend on things you always wanted. I am going to show you how to have more time to relax all while working less. All these by applying the simple and might effective concepts and tools of lean in your own life. Believe me it is the easiest to apply lean in your day to day life. You will get the 100% benefits for your efforts. Do you want to learn more? In the coming days, I will send you few emails almost every day. Look forward to the lean for life.

Why lean fail

We discussed why organizations look at lean. We discussed about some of the motives behind lean implementations. But the truth is sometimes lean fails. Lean fails to achieve results it expected to achieve. Lean fails due to many reasons. Below are few of them.

• 
  
  They simply copy from others. It doesn’t matter where you copy from, when you copy; it can go wrong than going right. Original ideas and free thinking is the ideal way to go forward. I do not mean you should re invent the wheel. But when it comes to lean, you will have to make sure, you get the concepts right. When you identify the concepts right you can apply them anywhere. Copying some other system will look easy, but copycats are proven to be failures. So be careful. Never copy. They have little value.

• 
  
  They are dishonest. Yes, if you are business man and if you are not keeping to your word you are dishonest. For an example, if you give a money back guarantee for your product at the point of selling them, you must make sure you attend to the need of the customer immediately. If the customer wants their money back, even if you know your product has nothing wrong, you must give them their money back. If you said to them you are offering a “No Questions Asked” money back guarantee, you should never question them. These are simple enough to understand. But what I am talking here is not being dishonest with the customers. I am talking about being dishonest with your efforts. Once you are committed to implement lean, you must make sure you give it a real whole hearted go. If you have doubts yourself, this will not work. When people are not honest with their efforts, they find plenty of excuses, but the end result will be never achieved.

Just like the good businessman who sticks to his original “No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee”, you should stick with your efforts honestly. This will bring you results.

• 
  
  They do not learn. Learning is a part and partial of the lean game. If you want to be in the game of lean, you will have to learn from your experiences. You must invest some of your time to read new literature on the subject. You must invest some of your time to think about new ways and methods of making this more effective. Any organization who fails in learning will fail in lean. Lean is a process. It never ends. So more you learn, better you become. But one point of caution though. There is no need to learn everything by experimenting yourself. In other words there is no real point of reinventing the wheel. Unnecessary experimenting will take time. Time is money. So do not waste it. Sometimes spending $100,000 in buying the required experience and the skill might be worth than spending 10,000 hours in experimenting with something.

So learn. Do not be afraid nor be lazy to invest some of your time and money in learning new things. More skilled you and your organization become, better it will get.

• 
  
  They have their own agendas. When I asked some of my friends the question “Why you think implementing lean is difficult?” vast majority of them, in various forms told me the same answer. Answer was, “different people have different requirements”. So they do not simply want to implement lean for personal reasons. Some just do not like change. Some just think they will lose their jobs with the implementation of lean. Some managers, especially middle level managers, just do not like you giving suggestions and coming up with new ideas. They look at you as a threat or as a nuisance. They just do not care. So real lean lovers fail to find a place to implement their ideas. Unfortunately even though these valuable ideas can be implemented to earn more money for the organization, save hours and hours of time and make the organization healthy or sustainable, their ideas fail. They fail just because you cannot find a proper place to implement them. They fail because you do not have the control of the things. This is one of the reasons for failure of lean

Never let these things to stop you from progressing as an individual and as an organization. Start small. The first step may be something very small like arranging your own drawer or cleaning and arranging your table. But the important point is starting it.

Start it from a point where you have the high level of control. Higher the control, better it is. No one can destroy your efforts for their personal gain when you start this way. You are in full control.

Lena may fail due to many other reasons as well. If you think otherwise, you can leave your thought as a comment to this post. As always, I really value your comments.

Lean Results: What an organization wants to achieve with its lean efforts

Interesting question isn’t it? We all talk about lean. We talk about lean implementations and its concepts tools and techniques. But why an organization would want to have a look at lean in the first place?

Without any doubts most of the businesses look at lean as a must have for their success in this competitive world. Everything is very competitive these days. Finding a job, passing an exam, earning enough money to live are things we face in our day to day lives. Similarly organizations want to appeal to their market, they want to sell stuff and beat all the competition. They want more profits. They want to satisfy the market demands quicker while using lesser resources. They want to be stable in their business or they want their business to be healthy in long run. They need an effective way to do this. So they look at the proven, time tested and well known lean techniques for help.

Let’s look at few of these objectives in detail.

Higher profits - This will help organizations to do what they want to do without money is being a barrier. Just like you would like to have tons of money to spend every organization would like to larger profits and more money with them. This will help their business obviously as excess money can be used to do more investment and to make more money. This money can be used to make their employees happy by giving away bonuses and taking them on trips. This extra money can be invested on their learning and making them more skilful.

Shorter Lead Times - When the lead times are shorter, organizations can produce more within the given limit of time or they can relax without running so hard. For an example if the cycle time is 30 mins per finished item, for a working day organization would manufacture 16 items when we take the average working day of 8 hours. But if they can reduce this cycle time to 20 mins, now they can produce 24 items. This means they will produce 8 items extra and they will increase their revenue by 33%. If they have no demand or no need for some reason to increase the production, they can use the extra 80 minutes a working day to make their employees happier by providing trainings, letting them enjoy more free time. Remember free time is an investment. It is not a waste. Employees can use this free time for something useful.

Stable business - Stability is a real measure of health of the business. It doesn’t matter how well you can do something today at this point of time, how you can do things in long term is really important for the survival of the business. Just like any of you look after your health a business would love to look after its health. This will give certainty and sanity every organization is looking for.

If any organization can achieve all the above objectives without actually working extra or burning extra resources, they will survive in this competitive business world.

With or without really knowing lean has achieved all these objectives. It has proven all these can be achieved simultaneously without compromising on each other. You wouldn’t want to compromise your health to earning money, would you? Just like that any organization should not compromise things to achieve something else. This is really important. Lean can achieve all these together.

Time tested and robust lean concepts and its proven tools has helped lean organizations to achieve their results by eliminating wastes, opening countless opportunities for improvements and keeping good systems in place. Importantly lean has framed things in a whole new way; people will start to see things in complete new light. They themselves will find very simple solutions to their problems.

I am not going to discuss each and every lean tool and concept here. We have done it number of times. I invite you to think how each lean tool and technique will be able to use to solve problems in your organization.

I love to hear from you. Please leave your comments using the comments link below. I really value them.